Guy Fawkes Day
Page 65
***
Ian Birtley was staring at his watch when the call came in. 5:17. Three minutes late, but just in time. With all the police vans and fire engines flying all over the place, it would only be a matter of time before the bastards sealed off the road and told him to clear off.
Well they can try this one instead, he chuckled to himself, releasing the straps at the top of his rucksack and pulling out the old Russian-made RPG17 grenade launcher.
Nice piece of equipment the RPG. He’d had a lot of fun with it out in the desert in Yemen and he was going to have a lot more now, firing the first shot in a wake up call to the world.
The weapon slipped effortlessly into firing position. A couple of tourists were watching from a park bench across to his right, probably too shocked to make any sense of what he was doing.
He aimed at the CCTV cameras situated high in the middle of the barbed wire fencing marking off the southern perimeter of the Lords, then squeezed the trigger. The recoil kicked at his shoulder, the explosion fathered a hundred screams from every side of Parliament Square, while the impact of the round sent pieces of metal and a filthy cloud of fragmented masonry flying into the air.
Birtley reloaded with a speed that had impressed the quiet Japanese fellow in training in Yemen. If he was quick there would still be time for one more round after this one. He swung the sight up, fixing on a spot just below the top of Victoria Tower, overlooking the Lords.
‘Quick four coppers running at us from Parliament!’ Lenny shouted from the bike.
But the second explosion sent their pursuers sprawling to the pavement. Shards of debris erupted from the three-hundred foot tower, raining down across the road and forcing a large double-decker to swerve in a wide arc away from Parliament.
‘That’s enough, lets get the hello out of here,’ Birtley shouted, throwing the RPG into the back of his rucksack and leaping onto the back of the bike in a mad scramble for survival. Another round would have been nice, but they had been told in no uncertain times that not getting caught was a priority.
The bike roared into life and as Lenny swung round and sped off back down Millbank away from Parliament, Birtley had time to turn and admire his handiwork. The grenade launcher hadn’t made much impact against the one hundred and fifty year-old tower, but it had done enough to make a statement. At least it would be something for the TV cameras to feast on later when things got going inside the building.