by Jeff Gulvin
‘Have you got an antidote, serum, whatever?’
‘We’ve been working on it since October.’
‘That’s not what I asked you.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Not yet.’
When the meeting was over, Garrod, Condon and Webb drove back to the Yard. The phone rang on the dashboard and the commander picked it up. ‘Garrod.’
‘Major Hewitt. 11 EOD.’
‘Where are you, Ron?’
‘Approaching target area now. Will be at the EOD control point in fifteen minutes.’
‘OK. Control command is the Antiterrorist Branch. We’re pulling back to the BBC building in White City. Designated entry and exit road is the A40, limited to security forces only. MOD are calling out every available army unit in London, who have NBC capability. The Prime Minister will be on TV any time, the broadcast will be nationwide. He’ll declare a state of emergency.’
Major Hewitt and his EOD operators arrived at the Barbican under armed police escort. The streets were already clear. Phil Cregan and his driver were waiting for them. Cregan knew three of the initial six warrant officers, who parked their vehicles in convoy on the Beech Street underpass control point. Tiny Tim Porter and Pete Mitchell, who made up the entry team, and also one of the diagnostics men, a warrant officer called Colin Salmons. Hewitt, he knew from various exercises they had been involved with. Cregan knew the drill and had prepared as much as he could for the questions that Hewitt would pose in order to make his evaluation. Standard procedure: PIT-STOP-PLAN-FELIX. The P in STOP was priority, only take risk if category A.
A few minutes earlier, he had listened to the Prime Minister broadcast a message over every radio and television station in the country. He had declared a state of emergency and hundreds of square miles of London were about to be evacuated. Already, Liddesdale Tower and the surrounding area had been cleared. Cregan had used his authority to get cordons in at four hundred metres and had the area fully searched by the City police. He remained on-site himself. If the device went off, he knew that he’d be dead anyway. Outside the four-hundred-metre mark there was pandemonium. The police and armed forces were trying to encourage a coherent set of evacuation procedures, but people were already panicking.
Cregan spoke to Hewitt. ‘We’ve got a possible chemical IED,’ he said. ‘Twenty-third floor, flat thirteen. The door and keyhole are sealed. There’s a balcony with a large window and French door. The whole thing’s been blacked out with paint.’
‘Access?’
‘Got to be the stairs—unless you want to risk the lift.’
Hewitt shook his head. ‘Are the engineers on their way?’
‘Should be here any minute.’
‘What’re the possibilities for remote RSP?’ Hewitt asked him.
‘Not good.’ Cregan looked up at the tower. ‘Whatever happens, somebody’ll have to get into the flat. I’ve checked the door and my guess is, it’s booby-trapped. Knowing what we do about Storm Crow methods, the booby trap will be delicate and almost definitely linked to the main IED.’
‘Cordtex the door?’ Hewitt asked him.
Cregan made a face. ‘Could do. Best possible outcome, the booby trap is neutralized. Worst possible outcome …’ He let the sentence hang.
‘In your opinion, Phil. What’s most likely to happen?’
Cregan remembered Swann showing him the photograph with a bullet hole in his head. ‘I think he’s a total bastard, sir.’
The mobile phone rang in the Range Rover and Tom Nicholson called out to him. ‘John Garrod,’ he said.
Cregan picked up the phone. ‘Sir?’
‘Are the ATOs there yet, Phil?’
‘Just arrived. Major Hewitt’s making his evaluation now.’
‘Engineers?’
‘They’re on their way.’
‘OK. When you’ve finished briefing Hewitt, I want you in White City.’
Cregan put the phone down and walked to the first EOD lorry where Tim Porter and Peter Mitchell were being helped into NBC suits. He lit a cigarette and watched them. After they were dressed, their aides helped them into the wraparound bomb suits—Kevlar-layered, with a cuff rising round the neck to the chin and an acrylic blunt trauma shield built into the chest area. He was glad it was them and not him. In any normal IED incident, i.e. categories B to D, the EOD team would allow for a soak time or waiting period, in order to ensure that the risk to military personnel was minimal. It was also the time for evaluation and planning. Category A demanded immediate action and Hewitt would have to plan the render safe procedure as the various EOD operators discovered exactly what they were up against.
Hewitt watched the two members of his entry team start towards the tower block and considered his options. Disposal operations had to be started now, regardless of personal risk. The entry team had no choice but to physically assess the best method of gaining entry, while minimizing the risks to themselves and the Engineers, who would undoubtedly be working with them. They were carrying all their entry equipment together with scientific testing gear, including the portable isotopic neutron spectroscopy system, which could identify high explosives, as well as nerve and blister agents within a sealed container. The evaluation took anywhere from one hundred to one thousand seconds, but assuming the entry team were successful, the PINS system would be on hand for the diagnostic team to make their analysis. Over and above that, there was the weight of Buck-eye—the smaller remote-controlled robot. They could not risk the lifts. If the bomb went off and they got stuck, there would be no way out.
Halfway up the stairs, Porter was contacted by his second.
‘Engineers are here, Tim.’
‘Good. Get them to come up and meet us. A couple, Barry. No point in risking any more lives than we have to.’
Hewitt monitored the conversations from the EOD—control point in the trucks parked in the underpass on Beech Street, from where he would endeavour to plan the render safe procedure, as and when the pertinent information was relayed to him. He hoped, although without much conviction, that once they had gained entry to the apartment itself, they might be able to move whatever device they encountered using hook and line, in order that a remote RSP could be implemented.
He sat in the back of the lead truck and switched on his equipment, computers, radios and the VDU for Buckeye, which linked to the portable screen that the entry team would use. The truck was in direct communication with the operations room at Scotland Yard.
Webb was already there, kitted out for chemical war. Larry Thomas of the FBI and Christine Harris from SO12 had volunteered to assist him. Webb was operating the main communications computer linking the EOD control point to the commander in White City. Half a dozen officers had volunteered to remain in the central command complex to co-ordinate radio and telephone contact for the evacuation. Apart from them, the rest of the Yard was empty.
Porter and Mitchell climbed the stairs and outside the City was silent. Late afternoon, the day muggy and heavy with cloud. Porter doubted the wind was travelling at twenty miles per hour. Most City occupants were daytime dwellers fortunately, leaving their offices for other parts of London at night. From the staircase windows, he could see the NatWest Tower dominating the now impotent financial centre of Europe; and the pyramid-like summit of Canary Wharf further down the river. He was sweating. It was early April now and warm, and the heat of the charcoal-lined NBC suit and the weight of the Kevlar bomb gear pressed the sweat back against his flesh. Already, the respirator pinched the skin of his face, squeezing his eyes in their sockets. His breathing was a rasp and hearing was greatly restricted unless he and Mitchell put their heads close together. Finally, they made it to the twenty-third floor and sealed front door of Flat 13.
At White City, Swann watched the Prime Minister on television again to repeat his emergency statement. He told the public the truth: there was a deadly terrorist threat in the City of London, and the nation faced the worst potential disaster ever encountered in peacetime. Each Lond
on borough would issue emergency notices through local radio stations and via the police using loud hailers. People were instructed to take only the bare essentials and leave in an orderly fashion. Hospitals, old people’s homes and hospices would be evacuated by ambulance and the army. They were to wait for contact by designated army and police personnel to arrange the transportation of patients. All roads out of London were to be used, bar the A40. This was for security forces and emergency services only. Any vehicle found on the A40 would be stopped. The Prime Minister again specified the affected areas and pleaded for those who were outside the downwind hazard to remain in their homes, to alleviate the weight of congestion.
Byrne joined Swann and watched as the cameras shifted back to the BBC studio housed below them, and the gravity of the newscaster’s face. ‘That was the Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘We can now go to our correspondent, Tim Gutteridge, close to the scene in the City.’
Swann stared at Byrne. ‘What the fuck is he still doing there?’
‘John,’ the reporter said, ‘I’m standing at the site of the initial cordon put in by the police. As we now know, this is not nearly sufficient, with most of London being evacuated. Any minute now, we will have to move out of the affected area by helicopter. I can just briefly tell you that the army is here en masse. We have bomb-disposal teams from the Royal Logistical Corps and the Royal Engineers, and they are currently trying to evaluate just what they are dealing with.’ A siren cut into him and the image was lost.
‘There’s no bomb-disposal team from the Engineers,’ Swann muttered. ‘They don’t have IED capability.’
The newscaster came back on screen. ‘I’m afraid we’ve lost those pictures from the City,’ he said. ‘The police have requested that people do not panic.’ He stopped then, touched the radio in his ear and said: ‘We’re just getting reports of a serious car crash on the A406, north of Muswell Hill.’ The picture shifted and Swann saw two cars coupled together and burning out of control. People were standing around in a daze; he could hear a woman sobbing bitterly and somewhere a baby was crying.
The newscaster came back on screen, and went on to tell them that the councils of Essex and Kent, Surrey, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire were implementing their emergency planning procedures in conjunction with the police and fire services. Schools, hotels, community centres, church halls and every other available building were being commandeered to accommodate the expected flood of refugees. The residents of those areas not affected were expressly requested to remain at home.
The camera then cut to Euston Station where the platforms were inundated with passengers. The reporter was jostled and shoved. ‘As you can see,’ he said, ‘the trains are already overloaded. Normal travel is nonexistent. There are no fares; people are just crowding on to trains in the hope of getting away from the carnage. Outside, cars are jammed on the roads and we’re told fleets of ambulances have begun arriving from as far afield as Hertfordshire and Cambridge, to begin the delicate job of evacuating the hospitals that are within the inner cordon, or “dirty line” as the security forces refer to it.’
The picture returned to the studio and the newscaster continued. ‘The army have been scrambled: the Duke of York Regiment, the Guards, the Territorial Parachute Regiment from the King’s Road. Soldiers, fully armed and wearing nuclear and biological warfare suits, have hit the streets in a convoy of lorries that move like an endless green centipede along the A40.’ His voice was interrupted by overhead video footage.
‘The stock market ceased trading some time ago,’ he went on. ‘Contingency plans take them only as far as South Quay, but South Quay is being evacuated. We’re told by City analysts that computer systems will take over, but many economists fear the effects will still be disastrous. When the Dow Jones opens in New York, the value of sterling is widely expected to plummet. In Brussels, an emergency meeting of the European Parliament has been called, and the Foreign Secretary will be flying in to make a statement. The spectre of Storm Crow has closed like great black wings over the lives of millions of people.’
Swann switched channels and saw two men fighting in front of their cars. An old lady on the pavement was bundled to the ground. Helicopters flew overhead. He thought of his children and thanked God he had told Pia to take them to Amersham as soon as she received the feather. Byrne shook his head at the screen. ‘Look at it,’ he said, gesticulating. ‘How can one man wreak so much havoc?’
Jesse Tate knocked on Salvesen’s office door. ‘Come in,’ Salvesen called. He was watching CNN on the television. Every news programme worldwide had been interrupted to broadcast what was happening in London. Jesse stopped to watch for a moment and saw the crowds of people panicking on the streets. The reporter was in a helicopter flying over the city and cars and buses and trains were shunting nose to tail. The pavements moved in a single mass of humanity, like millions and millions of bees crawling over one another. Salvesen was staring at the screen. ‘They don’t realize what I’m doing for them,’ he said. ‘They’ll never unite now. I’ll never let them unite. Storm Crow. He’s not bringing bad news but good. Don’t they know this is their salvation?’ His eyes were cold as stone. ‘Somewhere in the fires of Hell, Jesse, the Devil is gnashing his teeth.’
Jesse nodded slowly. ‘Harrison,’ he said. ‘His phone numbers check out in Marquette.’
‘They do?’ Salvesen frowned.
‘I got our friends in the police department up there to check him out.’
‘But?’ Salvesen caught the glint in Jesse’s eye.
‘I checked something else out. Harrison claims he was a Tunnel Rat in Vietnam. He’s got their badge tattooed on his shoulder.’
‘Go on.’
‘I checked the war records through one of our military contacts on The Register. There weren’t that many Tunnel Rats and only one called Harrison. He was from Michigan, but Detroit not Marquette. He got his DEROS, but the plane bringing him home crashed in the Pacific. There was another Rat from Chicago, but his name was Johnny “Buck” Dollar. His mother’s maiden name was Harrison.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘That was the difficult bit, Jake,’ Jesse said. ‘We’re lucky you got so many friends in so many places. John Dollar worked as a border agent for three years in New Mexico. After that he joined the FBI.’
Swann took a call on his mobile from Rachael, his former wife. She had gone to Scotland on a course the week before. ‘Jack, what’s happening? I can’t believe the news.’
‘You better believe it, Rach. It’s real.’
‘Where’re the children?’
‘Safe. I got them out of London long before anyone else.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Caroline Webb’s house. Pia’s with them.’
‘Thank God.’
‘You still in Edinburgh?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d stay there if I were you. If this bomb goes off, we’ll have a contamination problem for years and years and years.’
‘Storm Crow,’ she said. ‘Who is he, Jack? Why’s he doing it?’
‘We don’t know, Rachael. Why do any of them do anything?’ He looked up and nodded as Byrne gesticulated to him. ‘I’ve got to go now. Don’t worry, the kids are fine.’
He put the phone down and Byrne came over. ‘Colson’s called a meeting,’ he said.
Tim Porter and Pete Mitchell were joined by Captain Robert Ryman and four soldiers from the Royal Engineers, and they moved up to the twenty-fourth floor of the tower block. They had been fully briefed by the Antiterrorist Branch and had worked out a plan of containment. As yet the IED was unknown, but the blacked-out window indicated that some kind of dispersal device was set up on the other side of it. In Northumberland, Webb had found a four-foot length of scaffolding pipe, blocked and sealed two-thirds of the way along. A sealed projectile for a liquid, with a small shaped charge to set it off. The minimal explosion but maximum dispersal, twenty-three floors up, exploding the gaseous E-7/D10 into t
he atmosphere above London. It was all they had to go on. They had no definite idea what kind of timing and power unit had been installed, but it was likely to be the same kind as had been recovered from Queen’s House Mews. That was fitted with an. LCD clock, with separate alarm display and a ten-day decade switch. They had no idea what point the safety-arming switch had been set to. The bomb could go off at any time.
Ryman and his men had to try to find a way of containing the derivative if it was exploded into the atmosphere. During exercises certain options had been considered, for a given situation, but none of them had proved overly successful. This one was doubly difficult in that the target area was so high above the ground. Any form of wall construction had huge logistical problems. They had to try and keep the toxin out of water supplies, so any form of dilution containment was out of the question, unless they could seal the spillage in tankers. That in itself caused other problems. As it was, every vehicle that was inside the dirty line was potentially contaminated, and, if so, could never be brought out again. JCB diggers were on standby outside the inner cordon on Shepherd’s Bush common, and alongside them the decontamination tents had been erected.
The Engineers had racked their brains for alternatives and then one of their number had come up with a potentially good idea. They contacted an ocean salvage company in Tilbury and commandeered an underwater balloon. This was a massive lightweight tarpaulin bag that was inflated with helium underwater and used to assist the raising of wrecked ships from the seabed. It measured one hundred feet in length when deflated, and they believed it would be strong enough to hold the exploding chemical if the device went off. If they could secure it efficiently, they might be able to catch as much as seventy per cent of the material before it vaporized in the atmosphere.
The bag had been picked up in a Chinook helicopter and winched down on to the roof of Liddesdale Tower. The Engineers made their way up and transported the twenty-foot package down to the twenty-fourth floor. The plan was to break into the flat directly above the target and then abseil down the balcony and secure it in place with explosive bolts and sealant. The five of them, together with the two operators from 11 EOD, were now standing right over the bomb. The explosive bolt guns were risky: concussion waves could set off the detonators, overt vibration might trip a mercury tilt switch. But there was no viable alternative. To try to quietly drill holes in the concrete surround of the balcony would be time-consuming and awkward while hanging from abseil ropes.