There had been no loss of life, as the fourteen-year-old girl was out of intensive care and making a rapid recovery. The police were thanking their lucky stars that she and the other children had not been riddled with bullets like the innocent Brazilian at the time of the 7/7 London bombings. In his case, it had been a matter of mistaken identity, due to an officer watching his building taking a pee when the man left for work.
The long-term cost did not seem to be too great either. The airlines would have to go to considerable expense removing seats and galley equipment to allow those airliners forced to land at small airfields to take off, but it seemed only five airliners – a Boeing 747, three Boeing 777s, and an Airbus A340 – would actually have to be taken to pieces and carted away by lorry. A superjumbo A380 had landed at a small airfield with just enough runway to take off when lightened, with local people there very excited at the prospect of watching it take off.
Looking like the cat that got the cream, the prime minister was giving interviews to journalists avid for hard news, of which there was little. Many officials had already set off for home to celebrate with wives or partners.
Sir Charles had invited Holt back to Sackville Street to take stock over drinks.
‘Reviewing the situation before anyone else is the key to keeping ahead of the pack and being able to steer it in the direction we want.’
Having made that pronouncement, Sir Charles was pouring Holt his third drink when the OwlPhone sounded, with the computer-generated voice on the line:
We must congratulate Captain Holt for having worked out our intentions.
We recognize that the changes sought will take time to realize, so we will give you time, even several years’ time, before repeating the exercise. Key people in the country will perhaps need to be ready to take over, should you fail to implement the changes. In addition, we recognize that it will take two or more generations for the policies to result in material changes in the make-up of society.
However, our imbecile prime minister’s declaration that the government has achieved a great victory over us suggests he might renege on his assurances and fail to endeavour to introduce the measures right-thinking people believe are needed to better the country. I have therefore arranged a final nudge. Call it a booster jab.
The target has been selected to highlight the sad fact that while Air Chief Marshal Dowding and Air Vice Marshal Park saved Britain during the Battle of Britain in World War II, Bomber Harris and Leigh Mallory and their cohorts at the Air Ministry subsequently not only killed many civilians in France as well as Germany but sacrificed thousands of our pilots and aircrew for little gain other than their egos.
Finally, you must remember that the equipment we have at our disposal thanks to our financial clout and supporters in the armed services is second to none. This includes antimissile devices that will not only foil any attempts to use them against us but also render the said missiles uncontrollable, at least by you. Firing missiles at us could cause great collateral damage and loss of life, especially in a city such as London.
The OwlPhone switched to stand-by without any intervention on Holt’s part.
Sir Charles called the prime minister on the scrambler but could not persuade him to take the warning seriously. The PM reiterated the lie that the British government had never dealt with terrorists and said he was sure the Owl was bluffing. He would call his bluff – ‘teach the bugger a lesson’.
‘These are no ordinary terrorists, Prime Minister,’ remarked Sir Charles before replacing the receiver in despair.
To cover his backside, and fearing what might happen if the PM had his way, Sir Charles sent an official memo to all concerned, and that included the service chiefs, the Cobra intelligence committee, and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, warning of the dangers of attacking any perpetrators or preventing their escape without due thought as to the possible consequences.
He even mentioned the possibility that while the Owl had up until then used simple techniques, he might not be bluffing regarding the technology at his disposal, and notably antimissile technology, which could result in any missiles fired at his people running wild. As the Owl had said, there was no knowing the magnitude of the disaster that could befall London.
The television Sir Charles had left on in the background to keep up with the latest news, consisting mainly of a recap of events earlier in the day, had switched to a BBC reporter waiting with a cameraman on the river embankment outside London’s City Hall to interview the mayor.
‘I am not sure,’ the newscaster was saying, ‘what is happening here. HMS Belfast, the decommissioned World War II cruiser moored to my left above Tower Bridge as a tourist attraction, is on the move. I cannot see how it can serve any useful function in the fight against the terrorists, for although its guns are trained so that any shells fired would theoretically hit a motorway service station some twelve miles merely to show schoolchildren the elevation required to hit such a target during a battle at sea. As far as I know, there are no munitions of any kind onboard, apart perhaps for a few fireworks.’
What the TV commentator did not know was that half an hour earlier a group of the Owl’s men who had been eating at the riverside terrace of the Côte restaurant one hundred yards upstream from Belfast, had synchronized their watches before getting up in ones and twos, and walked casually towards the cruiser’s ticket office. Once onboard, they had meandered around, looking like typical tourists, until ending up at their designated positions.
One of those positions was the cabin controlling the ship’s public address system, where a couple of them were hovering around, pretending to be tourists interested in some detail, asking each other questions. At precisely 17.58, the two then moved into the empty cabin, with one guarding the door and the other seating himself in front of the microphone. At 18.00, the man at the microphone pressed the fire alarm, which started sounding throughout the ship and made the following announcement: ‘Everyone onboard, including all Royal Navy personnel, must vacate the ship immediately. This is not a drill and applies to everyone. This is not a drill. I repeat this is not a drill.’
There was a pause to let the order sink in, before it was repeated, followed by the usual words of reassurance: ‘Please proceed calmly. There is no need to panic.’
One veteran officer did try to make his way to the cabin with the PA system microphone but found the watertight doors leading to it were impossible to open. Apart from a party of schoolchildren, there were hardly any visitors onboard and the ship was ‘clear’ in as little as five minutes.
The visitors and six crew members gathered on the bank, wondering what was happening. The schoolchildren were larking around, much to the annoyance of their teachers.
Meanwhile, Sir Charles and Holt back at Sackville Street were also wondering what it signified when another message came in on the OwlPhone:
REPEATED WARNING!
As you can perhaps see on the television, we are now going into action again. If you try to attack us, we will attack the launching platforms. We will also render uncontrollable any missiles fired, with the result there is no knowing where they might end up.
Any loss of life will be your responsibility, or rather that of our demented PM.
Sir Charles immediately communicated this to the prime minister, who got wound up by the Owl’s final remark about him being demented and shouted, ‘They are bluffing. They have all along been trying to make us look fools.’
‘Prime Minister,’ Sir Charles insisted, ‘don’t you think he is trying to provoke you into doing something unwise? You should take them at their word. I must put it on the official record that I have advised you that any action you might take, and in particular one involving the firing of missiles, could result in a tragedy. The fact that I am advising you thus has been emailed to your office and the relevant departments, including the service chiefs, and I shall be following that up with a second warning in the light of the repeated warning from the Owl.’
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Officials, some on their commuter trains halfway home, were called back to the Cobra operations room and to their offices. From Sackville Street, Sir Charles did not have far to go to the Cobra room, where he found key people, including the prime minister, already gathered and discussing what the threat might be.
Holt, with no time to return to Farringdon, stayed behind at Sackville Street with the OwlPhone.
Sir Charles again repeated to those assembled in the Cobra room the warning from the Owl.
‘You do realize,’ he said, ‘the Owl may, as I have said before, be with us here in this room. We assume the Owl is a man, but it is not necessarily so. One thing I do know is that it cannot be the PM, as the only moment we are sure the Owl was addressing Captain Holt in real time, the PM was never alone, except for when he was busy in the toilet or bath.’
This remark about the PM being in the toilet only increased the PM’s anger, as all those present looked at him, imagining him doing his business.
Meanwhile, below decks on HMS Belfast other members of the Owl team were releasing the mooring chains, starting with those at the bow. An Owl diver who had been hiding underwater surfaced and clambered aboard a speedboat moored nearby that had been ignored by the police in their checks precisely because no one was onboard. The diver started the engine and eased the throttle forward, whereupon a hitherto unseen cable from the bow of Belfast to the launch rose out of the water as it took the strain.
As the cable tautened, the prow of the massive ship, initially pointing ten degrees leftwards towards the bank, was pulled to the right. At first, resistance was considerable, due to the strong current pushing the bow towards the bank, but once the bow reached the tipping point the effect was reversed, and the current pushed it out faster and faster towards the middle of the river. A couple of the Owl’s men at the stern of the Belfast began releasing the cables attaching her to the mooring there.
The diver gunned his extremely powerful engine to haul the cruiser into midstream and hold it against the tide, and once it had straightened up in alignment with the centre of Tower Bridge, he released the cable. The fast tide was carrying Belfast stern-first towards the two centre bascules, which open and shut to allow ships with high superstructures or tall masts to pass through.
Meanwhile, a recording was being played over and over again on the public address system on HMS Belfast: ‘Danger! Danger! Anyone remaining onboard should proceed to the bow and be two decks down, as the stern is about to collide with Tower Bridge, and much of the superstructure will be ripped off. This is not a drill. I repeat…’
This warning was not in vain, for a boy and girl some fourteen or fifteen years old had been smooching in one of the cabins, oblivious to the fact that the rest of their school party had left the ship. Looking out of a porthole, they could see it was no joke and quickly made their way to the bow and went one deck further down.
The diver on the powerful high-speed launch moved in to pick up the Owl’s men, who had escaped from the Belfast in a rubber dinghy, and after they had clambered aboard, gunned the engine so that it shot off downstream at high speed. As all eyes were on HMS Belfast, not much attention was being paid to it, especially since the men onboard had peeled off covers on the sides to reveal police written in large letters.
Nevertheless, the video feed from the BBC reporter at City Hall was being watched attentively by the PM and officials in the Cobra room. The PM had seen the launch making its escape and ordered that the two RAF Tornado fighter-bombers on standby over the Thames Estuary be sent to the scene.
‘Prime Minister, I must strongly object. I think attacking the launch from the air with a missile would be a great mistake and would have possibly disastrous consequences,’ interjected Sir Charles.
‘You are not PM. I am, and I have had enough.’
The PM then gave orders that the Tornadoes were to engage the launch regardless.
Having guessed the perpetrators’ intention to make Belfast collide with his bridge, the bridge controller tried to raise the bascules in the hope the giant ship would pass through, leaving the bridge unscathed. However, with insufficient time, he made matters worse, as the bridge would be even more vulnerable with the bascules slightly raised. Furthermore, in doing so he was blocking the path of the vehicles crossing it.
Drivers and a cyclist were surprised to see the road at the centre of the bridge rising up in front of them. A cyclist almost fell off into the water through the widening gap between the bascules, while the vehicles first stopped, then started slipping backwards, with the drivers behind not knowing what was happening and still coming on.
Cars were piling up on each other, and the occupants, seeing people fleeing, tried to exit their concertinaed vehicles and do likewise.
The massive cruiser was coming on relentlessly. The stern, slightly off centre, first ploughed into the left bascule, bending it back, and a fraction of a second later the ship’s superstructure was crumpling as both bascules ripped into it.
A couple of seconds later it was all over. The ship was through, leaving the bascules at the centre of the bridge contorted into ugly shapes, as if hit by a bomb, and the gearing for raising and lowering them damaged beyond repair. A landmark bridge that had miraculously largely survived the Blitz was fatally wounded.
As one can imagine, the TV stations were having a field day. Though the Owl had failed to bring about the semi-paralysis of London by unseating the five key bridges, the more visually dramatic events, such as the blinding of the police helicopters by kids firing from motorized ducks and destruction of the centre spans of Tower Bridge by the Belfast – filmed live by the BBC crew waiting to interview the mayor outside City Hall – were being viewed by the whole country and millions abroad.
The Owl had waited for the Belfast to finish its task before again claiming responsibility and sending his ‘political wish list’ to every TV station, newspaper and press agency.
Chapter 25
Errant Missile
Tower Bridge was a mess of contorted metal, and HMS Belfast was not a pretty sight either as she drifted on downriver with much of her aft superstructure missing or contorted.
The two naughty teenagers had felt the shock of the ship’s impact with the bridge and had heard the crumpling sounds. Realizing from the ensuing silence that the danger was over, they went up on deck to find considerable damage at the stern, while the bow was unscathed. They moved right to the prow and started waving at the armada of boats following them.
With so much attention being paid to the carnage taking place at the bridge and the sight of the wounded Belfast continuing on downstream, the escaping launch had for a moment been forgotten by those following the massive ship. Anyway, none of the boats were fast enough to catch up with it.
On learning that it had not been stopped and was fleeing downriver at high speed, the prime minister confirmed the order for the two RAF Tornado fighter-bombers to engage it. They were to take it out dramatically with a missile in a demonstration of the government’s power.
Despite the warnings from Sir Charles and military officials, the prime minister refused to back down.
‘Blow them to smithereens,’ he ordered.
In only a couple of minutes, the Tornado pilots had Tower Bridge in sight in the far distance and, dropping down to five hundred feet, easily picked out the fast-moving launch from the great amount of wash it was generating. Only one of them would engage it, as they did not want to risk firing more than a single missile in the centre of London. If Flight Lieutenant Saxton, who was the one going to fire, was not careful, he would overshoot, and it would take at least six minutes before he or his colleague could turn round and line up for another run, by which time the launch might well have disappeared up a canal. There, with buildings and people close by, it would be a more difficult and dangerous proposition.
His controller had already confirmed his orders to fire on sight and not waste time requesting reconfirmation – the prime minister h
ad said they would be court-martialled should they disobey the order to fire – so he simply locked on to the speeding launch and fired a single missile, which, with its sophisticated guidance system, could not miss. As he did so, there was a small puff of smoke from the launch, and he himself received a warning of an incoming missile.
He launched flares to try to confuse it. All to no avail, for just as he was initiating a climb, the missile from the launch detonated alongside his craft, crippling it. He was, however, able to point the nose downwards to ensure it would crash into the river, before ejecting himself.
Coming down in the river slightly concussed, he looked around but could not see the debris of the launch. A couple of minutes later, a couple of officers in a police launch pulled him out of the dirty Thames water.
‘Congratulations, sir,’ said one of them, making Saxton for a moment think he was a hero.
‘You’ve just demolished Big Ben!’
No one was ever quite sure whether the fact that the missile hit Big Ben was down to bad luck or was the result of the Owl having such sophisticated equipment that he had been able to take actual control of the missile fired by the Tornado and direct it there. Many thought it was too much of a coincidence that it would end up hitting such a famous landmark when there were so many other places where it could have come down.
Meanwhile, the prime minister and his advisors, expecting the launch to be blown up by the missile from the Tornado, had told police launches and other pursuing craft to hang back at a safe distance. With no boat near enough or fast enough to pursue it, the high-speed launch had disappeared into a smokescreen generated by devices set up by the Owl on the windward bank of the river.
The pursuing vessels milled around haplessly in the smoke, hoping to find the launch but without success, and when the smoke cleared there was no sign of it. Its burnt-out hulk was found further downriver at the next low tide. The men onboard had doubtless got off at the bank, holed it, and set it on fire to erase fingerprints before releasing it.
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