by Andy McNab
I probed further up the steps with my feet, stopping each time there was a creak, waiting to see if there was any reaction from above me. My face was now soaked: the respirator seal felt as if it was floating over my skin. My muscles were close to cramping as I used all the strength in my legs to move and keep balance, while still keeping eyes and weapon up.
I’d got half-way to the landing, maybe ten or twelve steps up, when I felt my right foot start to wobble and had to lean my shoulder against the wall for support. I sucked in oxygen like a deep-sea diver. The respirator sounded like a waterfall. Sweat trickled down my back; the thighs of my jeans were soaked and tugging against my skin.
The landing had no doors, just plastered walls. There was a different kind of light above me now, probably fighting its way through the first-floor windows from the street. It came from the right, which meant the staircase probably turned back on itself.
I wrestled my way up, still leaning against the wall, focusing completely on the quality of light, trying to detect any shift in its consistency that might indicate movement on the next flight.
A few more steps and I finally made it to the landing. I moved across Suzy’s arc of fire, weapon still in my shoulder, and pushed myself back into the far left-hand corner of the stairwell.
I could see six or seven steps from there, leading up towards the light, but I wasn’t going to move all the way round and risk showing myself to anyone higher up; I wanted Suzy here to back me. I looked down and saw her dark shape emerging gradually from the shadows. She would have her weapon down now, concentrating instead on keeping as quiet as possible.
I strained my eyes and ears for movement or sound, but all I could hear was the odd creak from below, myself trying to breathe through this fucking respirator, and the sporadic murmur of traffic.
I stayed static, weapon up, feeling the sweat pool at the seal. I hated this gear, but it always seemed to me a miracle that there was never any condensation on the eyepieces. I opened my mouth and leant forwards to listen again, trying to ignore the stream of saliva that dribbled down my chin.
A couple of minutes later Suzy was two steps away from me, her back against the right-hand wall, SD across her chest. I gave her another minute to sort out her breathing.
She nodded and I moved, my back against the wall, weapon up, edging my way until I was bathed in the soft light coming from above me.
I stayed to the left side of the staircase this time; Suzy kept right as I started to climb, my back drenched and hands soaking inside the rubber gloves. I kept wanting to use them to wipe away the sweat that stung my eyelids.
As my head came level with the first-floor landing, I could see the source of the light – a grime-covered, six-foot-tall window facing on to the street.
Rain pelted against the glass, camouflaging the traffic noise and, I hoped, the sound of our progress. The rooms above Costcutter directly opposite were at the same level, their droopy window nets showing no sign of life.
I was half-way through my next step when I heard a sound, a scraping sound, from above.
I froze, mouth open, holding my breath.
A truck roared past below us.
Had it just been a wooden beam settling down for the night, or a rat? Maybe.
I lowered my foot to get stable, and started to breathe again, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. I stayed static, waiting to hear if it happened again.
Six, maybe seven minutes passed. My muscles were close to cramping. The odd vehicle moved below me and a couple of dossers growled at each other in a doorway. Then the rain got heavier again, and started to pound against the glass.
I looked down at Suzy, still on the first landing, weapon up towards me. It didn’t matter if she’d heard it or not. She would know something was wrong because I was static. She’d just react to what I did.
I gave it another thirty seconds, then moved again, weapon up, butt in the shoulder, thumb checking single shot. I kept close to the left-hand wall until I reached the landing and moved into the left-hand corner to keep away from the window. Dull globules of light and shadow streamed across the bare floorboards as the rainwater ran down the glass. Opposite me, past the window and stairs that turned back on themselves once more, there was a closed door. A cheap, light-coloured interior type with a handle to the left.
Suzy began to move up as I dragged some more oxygen through my respirator. She stopped just short of the landing, her back against the right-hand wall as she waited for my cue.
I moved sideways, hugging the wall, weapon up. The light from the window died about a third of the way up the next staircase. I stopped with the window frame against my left shoulder and could see street level as far as the still-closed police station. As a truck rumbled past below, Suzy bent low and moved across my arc to take position by the door. Fuck the window, it just had to be crossed. I joined her, ready to make entry, my thumb checking single shot, my left hand adjusting itself on the barrel, the pad of my trigger finger taking first pressure.
I nodded, and Suzy’s hand closed round the handle and gave it a twist. There was the tiniest of squeaks as the door inched open. My eyes saw light, first from the window one side of the ship’s bow, then the other. I moved over the threshold, going immediately left, sweeping the room, keeping low, clearing the doorway for Suzy to come through just one pace behind.
Three paces in, I went static, leaning into the weapon. I could see the whole bow of the ship. The floor wasn’t subdivided as it had been below; it was just one big open space. There was an old steel desk near the windows, and a couple of upturned plastic chairs. On its side in the middle of the room was a knackered old satellite dish, a solid plastic meshy thing about five feet in diameter. The rest of the place was in similarly shit state. The windows were really getting hammered by the rain here, and it sounded like we were inside a snare drum. The sign for King’s Cross station shone at us opaquely from across the street.
I took a couple of deep, noisy breaths and was turning back towards the door when I heard a dull knock above us.
Suzy was rooted to the spot, her head cocked upwards.
I tried not to breathe. Saliva streamed down my chin.
It had come from above us, no doubt about it.
They were up there. The fuckers were up there, directly above us, somewhere on the second floor.
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I stood rigid, my head still cocked towards the ceiling.
I closed my eyes to concentrate harder, but the noise didn’t come again. All I got was the drumming of the rain, and the odd splash of traffic.
Two or three minutes passed. I was sure the sound had come from my right, over towards the Pentonville side of the ceiling.
Still nothing. Finally I headed for Suzy, lifting my feet carefully to avoid making the same mistake as someone upstairs. Squeezing her shoulder, I gestured towards the right side of the ceiling, then shrugged questioningly. She moved her hand more towards the centre, wiggling it to show she wasn’t certain.
But wherever it had come from, we both knew it was definitely human.
We were wasting time: there might be locks up there, obstructions to find a way past or early-warning alarms to defeat. No need to tell her that, she was already moving towards the still open door. I just turned round slowly, butt in the shoulder, thumb checking single shot, and followed on.
I veered to the right of the frame and bent down until I could see about half-way up the stairs. I adjusted my cheek on the steel rod of the butt and flicked my eyes across to the sight. The circle and dot were reassuringly in place. As I moved on to the landing and up the left side of the stairs, Suzy came through behind to cover me.
I stopped every few stairs and paused to listen before taking a few more. The light from below was just about good enough to allow me to make out the second-floor landing. This time it extended left and right.
As my head came level with the top step, I dropped my left hand, weapon up towards the ceiling, safety catch back on to avoid
an ND [negligent discharge]. What I wanted now was a good firm position from which to look left and right along the landing. It ran about five or six metres in either direction until blocked at each end by a solid fire door with a big aluminium handle. The creasing rubber of my overboots squeaked gently as I lowered myself on to the stairs and beckoned to Suzy. I didn’t know what was on the other side of these doors, but I’d already made a pretty good guess, and I wanted her alongside me before we continued.
Soon she was lying beside me on my right, pointing her thumb left to indicate the way she thought we should be going. I motioned agreement and headed left on to the landing, keeping my weapon up. I didn’t want it banging into her or, even worse, the metallic clash of two weapons. Suzy took up position behind me, covering the other entrance and the stairs until called for.
The door was fitted flush against the wall, hinged on the left, with a pressure arm, and would open towards us from the right. I moved closer, the SD back in my shoulder, eyes on rapid blink to try to clear them of sweat before I got my head against the door. To avoid banging the wood with my canister, I used my right ear, just below the handle, at the point where it met the frame. For several seconds, it was like listening to a big shell and hearing nothing but the sea; then, somewhere on the other side, I heard a door creak, and footsteps, coming towards me.
I took two swift paces back and hunched over the weapon, eyes straining, no more blinking. What if two came through together? What if there was only one, but covered by someone behind? It all boiled down to the same thing: if anybody came through the door, I had to go for it. No time to check on Suzy: she’d know the score from my reaction and would be backing me.
The footsteps got closer. I took up first pressure.
The footsteps stopped. I took a breath and stared at the door, ready to drop whoever appeared through my head-up display.
Still nothing.
Then, from just the other side of the door, came a familiar sound. The bastard was pissing into a bucket.
It seemed to go on for ever. Sweat flowed down inside my right glove and dripped off my left eyelid, stinging and blurring my vision.
I took another breath and heard a murmur. It didn’t come from whoever was having the piss; it came from further back. The stream slowed and, after a few short squirts, finally stopped.
The footsteps retreated. I released first pressure, and returned to my position against the door, safety on, finger along the trigger guard. I heard a cough, then nothing but the sound of the sea once more.
The bucket was good tactics. Even if the water supply hadn’t been cut off, they wouldn’t have been flushing toilets.
It was time to get in there. I moved backwards away from the door, until I got my head level with Suzy’s. She was leaning into her weapon and covering the other way.
I could hear her sucking air through her canister. I held up my middle and index finger, gave her a thumbs-down, pointed at her face, and then the door handle. She turned and moved towards the target door as I got into a fire position, giving my head a quick shake to try to clear the fucking sweat out of my eyes.
Keeping left, Suzy made a final check with me and slowly pulled open the door. The pressure arm creaked, not much, but it sounded to me like a pistol shot.
The moment there was enough room I slipped slowly through into the darkness, hunched down. There were no windows, just solid walls each side of me. My face was soaking wet, my throat parched as I inched forward, eyes wide, trying to breathe slowly to control noise. I heard the gentle click of the fire door closing under Suzy’s supervision, then felt something soft and slippery beneath my boot. They’d done more out here than just piss.
There was mumbling ahead of me, voices maybe ten metres away, perhaps further. I froze. I couldn’t see anything apart from the soft glow of the SD sight, even though my eyes were starting to adjust. I leant forward to listen for more.
Three or four minutes passed and I began to make out a closed door a few feet away on my left. I edged nearer. What if they weren’t together? What if they were split, in different rooms? There was no light coming from the crack beneath the door.
I could hear muffled sounds from further down the corridor: two, maybe three voices talking in low tones. I couldn’t make out the language, but what the fuck did that matter? I didn’t know if Suzy had heard what I had, but if I went static so would she. Time to get the hoods on.
Pointing the weapon to the ceiling, I rotated slowly, so as not to cut into her arc or bang into anything.
I’d only taken two paces back towards her when Suzy was flooded with light from behind me. As it flared off her eyepieces I dropped to my knees to give her more arc. I was still turning back the way I’d come as the pressure wave of her burst hit the side of my head.
Thud thud thud.
The light came from another doorway, no more than ten paces away to the left. No body on the floor, just a dropped hand-light, and smoke curling into the corridor.
A barrage of screams and shouts erupted inside the room, and Suzy was already ahead of me as we ran towards the light, weapons up. No time to mince about, she went straight in and turned right.
There was a blur of a target: she moved towards it.
I ducked left as she let off another three-round burst.
Big room. Pools of light from the floor. Hazy with cigarette smoke. Lots of shadows. Stuff all over the place. Writing on the walls. Target left – coming from behind a pile of plasterboard, left of another door.
Everything slowed. He was no more than ten metres away. I stopped breathing. My eyes followed him as he ran left to right, not looking about, just hunched up and focused. I followed him, left foot forward, leaning into the weapon, swivelling with him, checking safety was on single shot as I brought the weapon up the last two inches, first pressure already taken as the sight broke into my line of vision and the target hit the screen, but still moving right. I caught him up, watching the circle come from behind his body until it was centre of body mass.
Thud thud.
The double-tap took him down. Real time returned.
Breathing now, I moved towards him, double-tapping again, into his back.
Then I saw what he’d been going for. On the floor, behind a box, were the bottles.
A body hit me from the left, grabbing at my SD. We both went down.
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His bodyweight smothered me. I kicked out, tried to head-butt him, the SD pinned between us.
Jeaned legs jumped over us – an Indian woman. She grabbed a couple of bottles and ran for the door.
That was the last thing I saw. The mouthpiece of my respirator was wrenched back over my eyes, and my hand torn off the pistol grip. I could smell cigarettes on his breath as he twisted the muzzle towards me.
I bucked and kicked.
The weapon fired. No one was hit. Shit, he had the trigger.
Screams echoed down the corridor.
I felt the barrel of the SD coming round, raking across my chest. My eyes were still covered. I tried to flick the respirator off by rubbing it against whoever was holding me down, as I bucked and kicked to keep the muzzle away from me.
From above came a three-round burst and the weight on top of me squirmed and let out a scream. I pushed and kicked myself away, ripping the respirator off my head. Suzy was standing over him as he crawled towards the bottles, a mush of blood and bone where his right foot used to be.
Suzy got astride him, and gave him another three rounds into the skull. Blood exploded over the lino.
She picked up a bloodstained battery-powered camping lantern from the floor and went back through the escape door to check on the runner. I grabbed my weapon. Fuck the respirator, it was too late now. If there was any of this shit in the air those antibiotics had better get working.
She reappeared carrying two bottles, which she placed carefully alongside the others. ‘There’s three down and clear.’
Her chest heaved, hungry for air through her cani
ster, as she looked me up and down with the lantern. ‘You OK?’
I looked around at the haze of cigarette and cordite smoke. ‘Yeah, think so. Fuck that, I thought, you know . . .’ I took a second to recover before lifting my boot to show her what had attached itself to the sole, then tapped her canister. ‘If we hadn’t had these fucking things on, we could just have followed our noses all the way from the kebab shop.’
It wasn’t that funny but she started to laugh anyway and we couldn’t stop as we inspected the bottles. Blood was pooled around their bases, but all twelve looked intact, their foil seals undisturbed. I felt much more than relieved as I freely breathed in the cordite and tobacco. It made sense that they wouldn’t have opened the bottles and risked contaminating themselves until the last minute before they attacked. If the attack was delayed a couple of days, they would be too ill to carry it out. Three large, identical nylon sports bags with shoulder straps were alongside them, and four sets of new clothes and shoes. There were Underground maps and Zone One carnet books sitting on top of all four piles, but only three had cell phones.
I went down on one knee to investigate the bags. Each contained what looked like a fat steel bottle of compressed air, about two feet long. There was also a hard plastic cylinder, maybe two feet by one, connected to a tube that was fed through the fabric and concealed in the mesh pocket where you’d normally put your trainers.
Suzy picked up the bottles one by one and wiped the blood off them with one of the shirts. I picked up an Underground map. I could see at least twelve mainline station signs in Zone One. Four were ringed in pencil, including King’s Cross. All were served by Underground lines. I threw it over to Suzy and picked up another; that, too, was marked, this time with stations further to the west including Paddington and Victoria.
About the only thing I’d learnt at school was that the tube’s ventilation system worked like a piston: the trains pushed air in front of them as they went. It was why the tunnels were only just big enough, and there was a rush of air every time a train arrived at a platform. If you were in the DW business, there was no better way of spreading the good news.