Guy Fawkes Day
Page 102
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Victoria Tower, Houses of Parliament: 10:47 p.m.
Captain Laker was standing in the drizzle in Black Rod's Garden. Though the floodlights on the 320-foot Victoria Tower just in front of him had been cut, he could just about make out signs of the damage which the terrorists had inflicted with an RPG7 grenade launcher strike when they had taken over the Palace.
Laker was listening for a progress report from the four-man section attempting direct entry to the Lords via the Tower. When they received confirmation that Sergeant Tovey's boys had broken through to the roofing above the Queen's Robing Room, that would be the signal for the remainder of 'Gladstone' platoon to begin their own ascent onto the roof of the Lord Chancellor's Department.
The misty air accentuated Laker's nervy breathing. He knew the terrorists had mined the corridors inside the Lords, but the mines themselves should prove no impediment to steady, careful progress. All the same…
For a fraction of a second the earth seemed to fall from underneath Laker's feet, and in that infinitesimal microsecond his consciousness registered what was about to happen.
Less than a second after Abu Fawaz's radio fuse triggered the twenty-five bricks of Semtex C4 concealed behind the portrait bust of Lord Home in the Norman Porch, Laker and his men were completely incinerated and the entire southern end of Westminster Palace came crashing to its foundations.