by Carlos Luxul
He ran back to the car and jumped in. Julie was still in the passenger seat, but now she had Phoebe in her arms. The area around them was cramped, the cars abandoned haphazardly. The engine revved as he lurched back and forth, turning to face the fields and bumping up the verge. The front of the car had lifted, its headlights pointing up. He pumped the flasher.
‘What are you doing?’ Julie said.
‘The helicopter. I’m signalling.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got to try.’
‘Try what?’
‘This. Everything. It’s my case, it’s happening … C’mon,’ he urged, switching to Morse code. ‘Look at me, look at me!’
Helicopter pilots were often ex-military, he reasoned, and though his Morse was rusty and very likely the pilot’s as well, it was all he had.
He repeated the same message, again and again. ‘SOS MI5. Come to me.’
The nose of the helicopter dipped. It started to descend, dropping steeply. Dan knew he had to do something, but what exactly? There were two imperatives. The first was to stay with his wife and daughter. The second was to go. He still had no idea which to choose, but having attracted the pilot he realised he couldn’t lose him now.
‘Just wait here,’ he said. ‘One minute.’
He ran round the car and scrambled down the bank, vaulting the fence and sprinting out into the field, trying to put distance between the crowds on the motorway and the helicopter. The pilot was unlikely to land if he thought he was going to be mobbed. A glance over his shoulder reassured him. People had turned to look, but he was no more than a sideshow.
The pilot opened the door and pulled his headphones down. Dan ran under the blades and leant in, staring into a pair of sunglasses between a shaved head and a goatee beard.
The words came out in a rush. ‘I’m Dan Brooks, MI5, we’ve got to get down there.’
‘Down there?’ the pilot said. ‘Looks like a fucking war zone to me.’
‘It is! I’ll explain on the way.’
‘You got ID?’
‘Course I got ID!’ Dan said. His head dropped. ‘Fuck it! Left it in the car. It’s terrorists on a ship. Four stolen Bofors guns. They’re down there in Docklands. They’ve got a nineteen-thousand-yard range, so they must be there. We’ve got to find them! Are you really making me run back for my fucking ID?’
‘Bofors guns. Nineteen-thousand-yard range?’
‘Four of them. Sold to the Indian navy and lost from a cargo ship last Christmas. But not lost, hijacked, before the ship was scuttled.’
‘You ex-forces?’
‘Navy. Lieutenant commander.’
‘Okay, we go.’
Dan turned his head towards the road. ‘My wife and daughter. They’re in the car.’
The pilot turned to the line engineer sitting next to him. ‘Could be risky down there …’
‘And you’ll wait here,’ Dan said.
The pilot nodded. ‘Don’t hang about.’
Dan ran around the front of the helicopter and pulled the engineer out. He was not a young man and was unused to running across farmland on a hot day. A minute later they were over the fence and he was shoving him up the embankment.
Julie was standing by the car. Her eyes switched between Dan and the city over his shoulder. He could see in her face that the shock was subsiding, her rational mind returning.
‘You’ll be all right here. Just wait for me.’
‘Do what you have to,’ she said.
~
Dan looked at his watch. It was 12.27. ‘They must be somewhere near the Dome. Start there and then downstream.’
‘Four minutes and we’ll be there,’ the pilot said. ‘I was army. Tom Bergen. My Morse is a bit slow – but I got there in the end.’
Dan smiled. ‘I was counting on it. Nice to know you, Tom.’
Bergen glanced across. ‘I took a good look at you before I let you in here,’ he said, the hint of a cautious smile on his mouth. ‘You didn’t look like a nutter, I couldn’t smell booze, and that’s a military watch on your wrist. And you knew your Morse and said yards.’ He nodded, confirming it to himself. ‘I’ve been on exercises with your lot so I know what Bofors are, and anyway, your guess of what’s going on down there was just about the same as mine.’ He paused. ‘And arguing about it in a field wasn’t likely to be something I’d look back on with pride …’
Dan raised his eyebrows. ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he said, turning to the dashboard and scanning the dials and gauges in front of him. ‘I’ll try the radio – channel 16.’
Bergen nodded. It was a standard marine setting, an open channel that all ships were required to monitor.
Dan knew the risk. The Ocean Dove was likely to be listening. They might take it as a warning and think again, or they might increase the pace. He pressed the speaker switch.
‘This is Dan Brooks. I’m a government security officer and I urgently need information on a ship, possibly called the Ocean Dove, with the name OceanBird painted in big letters on the hull. Has anyone seen a ship like this in London yesterday or today? Over.’
The radio stayed quiet. As he reached up to repeat the message, a voice came through.
‘Hello, mate. This is the Jane. G. We’re a tug doing the council rubbish run. I saw that boat this morning, don’t know its name but it had that bird down the side and a picture on the funnel. We was down near Purfleet and he was coming up. What the fuck’s going on? Over.’
Then a new voice cut in. ‘This is the Kew, Port of London pilot launch. We took a pilot out this morning at 06.00 to the Ocean Dove. She was going to be berthed at the old Moritz works. Over.’
‘What’s Moritz and where is it? Over.’
‘It’s a closed-down chemical plant on the river with its own berth, about one mile upstream from the Thames Barrier. On the south bank. Over.’
‘Thank you. Over and out.’
As Dan looked through the windscreen searching for landmarks and checking his bearings, Bergen was already a step ahead.
‘Got it, south bank, one mile west of the barrier,’ Bergen said.
The scale of the horror was unfolding graphically. On their right was Canary Wharf. A little way behind it, the City business district. In his headphones Dan heard Bergen exhale and whisper, ‘Fuck …’
The river was mostly obscured by smoke but Dan was still able to track its twists and turns. Below was the smouldering Excel Centre, to his left the Thames Barrier, its neat line of pillars now as irregular as a mouth with some of its teeth kicked out. A mile upstream on the south bank and dead ahead through the windscreen was a smoking industrial site. It had to be Moritz.
~
Tariq yelled from the bridge. ‘The radio. Channel 16. They’re on us. Some government security guy.’
Choukri spun around on the wings and ran in. ‘What do they know. What exactly?’
‘This guy was asking if anyone had seen the Ocean Dove in London.’
‘And what did they learn?’
Tariq’s eyes widened. ‘The pilot boat said we’re here!’
Choukri lifted his walkie-talkie. ‘Everyone. They’re on to us. Watch the river and sky!’
Mubarak was out on the wings, his binoculars raised. ‘Helicopter!’
Choukri dashed out to him, leaning over the rail, checking around. Down in the hold, all four guns were still pumping a thousand rounds a minute, the carousels turning, the barrels too hot to touch but still working to maximum efficiency. Across the quay, he saw Assam and Snoop crouching among the cargo on the terminal, training their Kalashnikovs on the helicopter.
~
Something clicked in Dan’s mind as the scene unfurled below him.
‘Look at it,’ he said, ‘where Moritz is, the way the smoke’s moving right over it on the breeze, south-west. It’s the perfect hiding place. It’s fucking genius.’
‘Doesn’t the smoke get in the way?’ Bergen said.
Dan shook his head. ‘The guns are prog
rammed. They don’t need to see.’
‘Shit. I was thinking we can blow smoke over them with the blades, blind them.’
‘No difference,’ Dan said.
‘So what can we do?’
‘Find them. Make sure.’
‘Wish this was my old gunship – fully armed …’ Bergen said, shaking his head. ‘I’ll go west round the back,’ he added, yanking the controls into a dive, swooping in a low arc through the billowing haze from the fuel depot.
There was a break in the smoke as they fanned out over the river. The Ocean Dove was clear for a moment alongside the wharf, it bows pointing west and its hatch open.
‘Bastard!’ Dan cursed; the four grey boxes lined up in the hold were all too clear, their barrels pumping.
A familiar voice came over the radio. ‘LaSalle calling Dan Brooks. Over.’
Thank you, God. Dan had been praying someone would be monitoring the open channels, someone like GCHQ, and that it would filter back.
‘Brooks here. I’m in a helicopter over Docklands. It’s the Ocean Dove. It’s moored in the river and firing.’
‘A helicopter?’
‘Don’t ask. Have we got assets?’
‘We have assets. Coordinates please.’
‘One mile upriver from the Thames Barrier,’ Dan said. ‘South bank. The old Moritz chemical plant.’
~
Choukri’s eyes alternated between Tariq and the radio as the helicopter cut across their bow four hundred metres upstream. The sniper rifle was propped at his side.
He steadied it against the door frame, the cross hairs on the helicopter’s windscreen, switching from the guy in sunglasses to the one next to him – the one whose mouth was moving. He breathed out, feathering the trigger before yanking his head back, his eyes widening. ‘You!’ he spat, recognising Dan’s face from the dossier he had on him. ‘Why couldn’t you just die when you had the chance …’
By the time he’d sighted the rifle again, the helicopter had dived low and right. He’d missed his shot. ‘Fire! Fire! Take that fucker out!’ he yelled into the walkie-talkie.
The helicopter windscreen was pointing away, a flank exposed as it careered over the old gasworks. Snoop and Assam let rip with automatic fire. Cookie scrambled across the hatch to the landward side, concentrating his aim on the tail rotor. A hail of bullets clattered into the back of the fuselage.
Choukri dashed to the wings as the helicopter dipped from sight beyond the plant, masked by acrid smoke billowing from the roof of the main building.
~
With the engine dying, Bergen pulled back on the stick, trying to find enough altitude to autorotate to the ground on the blades.
‘There!’ He pointed. ‘Hang on.’
They were losing height, the engine unable to give power, dying in a fit of spurts.
An eerie silence fell as Dan stared down at a patch of green surrounded by houses. It was quickly replaced by wind howl, the blades autorotating and slowing their fall. Bergen heaved at the controls, the cabin swinging from side to side.
Dan felt his spine jar and the air rush from his chest as they thumped into a flower bed, the blades lashing a parked car like a can opener.
‘You okay?’ Bergen said, turning to him.
Dan nodded. ‘Think so,’ he croaked, his lungs refusing to breathe.
A seat belt clicked and Bergen clambered out. Dan’s breath was returning. He took a gulp and tried his door. It didn’t move. He pulled himself over Bergen’s seat, unclipping a fire extinguisher at the side of it.
‘Here,’ he said, as flames licked around the engine bay and exhaust ducts. Bergen yanked at an access panel and fired it, his face turned away, eyes shut tight.
Dan walked about for a few paces, his hands gripping the base of his spine. He looked around, getting his bearings, working out the route to Moritz. From the smoke rising over the houses in the distance, he reckoned they were about five hundred metres away.
They had landed in a cul-de-sac, a cluster of semi-detached houses around a green. A single road pointed in the direction of the river. People crept from their houses, looking around anxiously, a smouldering helicopter in a flower bed just one more bizarre sight on a surreal day. The quiet was unnerving, the only sounds distant, rumbling and booming like thunder behind faraway hills, the air filthy with a noxious stink and bitter taste.
‘You coming?’ Dan said.
‘Too fucking right!’
At the top of the road was a staggered junction. They turned left and then right, continuing north at a fast jog. The roads were lined with cars but no one was about. At the end was a patch of waste ground with the Moritz works on the far side, a hundred metres up on the left.
‘It’s all happening now,’ Bergen said. He raised his eyes, his chest heaving, sweat beading his forehead. ‘Look.’
Arcing around the terminal was an Osprey, a hybrid plane-helicopter, a type used by the SAS. It disappeared from view behind them, not far from where they had abandoned their own.
Dan edged along a wall and parted some leaves in a bush, a fingertip brushing against fence wire. The Ocean Dove’s bow and the top of the accommodation block were visible, the rest of it hidden behind stacked cargo on the terminal. The guns had stopped firing but the ship was still there, with smoke coming from its funnel.
‘Could be getting ready to leave,’ he whispered.
The fence stretched along the road. Three quarters of the way down were the main gate and the security building. He looked diagonally across the yard towards the river. There were choices – the main gate, over the fence from where they stood, or down the side of it by the creek. Waltzing through the main gate was a non-starter and there was open ground to cross if they climbed in now.
‘If we get down the side, there’s cover in the yard,’ Dan said. He looked along the fence that ran down to the river on Moritz’s eastern boundary. The ground was thick with brambles and nettles. A steep bank tumbled down to the creek. But it was cover. ‘They could have people on the terminal.’
‘They could …’
Fifty metres in, Dan stopped and pushed back some undergrowth at the fence. Light summer clothes offered little protection and his bare arms were trickling blood, a thorn wedged in a dripping ear. ‘Bit more,’ he said.
Behind the fence were storage tanks shielding them from the ship. They crouched motionless, eyes scanning the terminal for any sign of movement, checking shadows, ears cocked. A black plume gusted towards them from the main building, a lick of flame crackling from a shattering window.
‘Looks clear,’ Dan said.
Layers of barbed wire topped the fence. Dan ran an eye over it. He needed to get up, over and down in one quick movement – and perhaps back again even faster.
Bergen pulled his shirt over his head and handed it across. Dan put a foot in his cupped hands, another on his shoulder, spread the folded shirt over the spikes and swung across, wincing as barbs gashed his palm and a thigh.
When Bergen was over they started to make their way along the terminal, a few steps at a time, slipping from crate to packing case, stopping, checking, before moving on. Dan peered gingerly around the side of a shipping container, his head shooting back. He raised a finger to his lips. A leg was stretched out on the ground, the sole of a boot upturned.
He crept back around the other side. The leg was attached to a body, face down, blood on the back of the head. It was motionless, no sign of breathing, a Kalashnikov on the concrete. Stepping silently, Dan picked the gun up and reached behind until he felt a hand taking it. Blank eyes stared up as he rolled the body over, an exit wound the size of a pool ball gaping in the forehead, the mouth open, a green slime dribbling from it.
Glancing round over his shoulder, a shadow flashed and a length of steel piping crashed down. The Kalashnikov clattered to the concrete, followed by Bergen.
Dan sprang to his feet, gauging the relative distance between the gun and the pipe-wielding guy, who was evidently doing
the same. It was equidistant, half wedged under Bergen, and the man had a four-foot piece of pipe in a vice-like grip. Dan’s eyes flashed around, checking his ground, looking for a weapon; he was surrounded by metal in an alley of shipping containers, with only the smoke-filled sky above. He could back away, or go forward, and that didn’t feel the better option.
The eyes staring at him were narrowed. Dan saw they held an animal quality and no fear. There was something else in them, something he could only sense: that they recognised him. They were set in a resolute face on a powerful body, which sprang at him.
He yanked his head away. The pipe swept past his eyes with a whoosh in the air, clipping the top of his shoulder and clattering against a container with a hollow bang. It was immediately followed by the sickening crack of a hard fist connecting with his mouth and nose. He launched himself forward, his head back, his neck muscles uncoiling as he planted his forehead into a cheekbone. The man crashed against a container, side-stepping in an instant as Dan waded in but missed.
A voice crackled on the walkie-talkie hooked on the man’s belt. ‘Choukri, where are you?’
The call didn’t bring a flicker to the man’s eyes. He leapt forward, and this time he connected. Dan felt air surge from his chest as the pipe slammed into his ribs. He staggered back but the man was on him like a cat. The pipe rattled on the ground as a strong hand ripped at his throat and a fist rained blows to his head.
Dan raised a leg and stamped down, aiming for ligaments around the knee. His foot brushed by. In an instant he knew his opponent was as quick as he was strong, and there was relish for the fight in the face that was inches from his own. Slamming his opponent backwards, Dan lost his balance, bringing them both down in a writhing tangle.
They tumbled out of container alley onto the open terminal, still locked together. This guy’s going to kill me, Dan thought, he wants to do it and he can do it. He knew he had the fight of his life on his hands, a fight for his life. The swollen veins on the temples were inches from his own face. He could smell the breath, feel the calloused hand crushing his windpipe.