by J. F. Kirwan
She inspected the hologram. The location was deep, in some kind of tunnel, maybe a sewage channel. That would fit Salamander’s mentality. The digital display read 09:59. There should be plenty of time, though she reckoned it wouldn’t be so easy. The warhead could be booby-trapped, for one thing. She knew she should go. She needed to be there. But there was no way MI6 would send her along with British forces. Unless…
She found Arash, made her focus, and then asked the favour. Arash looked uncomfortable about it, but obliged. Fifteen minutes later Nadia had the small phone that had been confiscated as soon as she’d arrived. She made the call. The colonel wasn’t too pleased to hear from her, until she told him they’d found the location, and that a Russian observer needed to be present. Someone MI6 would accept.
He agreed.
***
Jake came back on the hour, at nine o’clock. Seven hours left. Simon’s body, and all the gear, had gone, along with Arash and Tom. A new shift of people had come in, and the Ops room was bustling. And then they all heard it. Nadia didn’t know what it was at first. A long siren, rising slowly for a few seconds before descending, then repeating.
‘The old sirens for an aerial attack,’ Jake said. ‘They’ve been in place since the Second World War. People would hear them and rush to the bomb shelters or down to the Underground stations during the Blitz.’
They had finally given the order to evacuate. ‘What have people been told?’
‘Major gas leak underground. We didn’t want outright panic. People are used to gas leaks. This one is just a lot bigger than what they’re used to.’
‘And the leaders, the G20?’
‘Evacuating to somewhere in the north, at least for now.’
‘Do they know?’
‘Some of them. Russia, US and us for sure. Maybe France and Germany.’
‘There’ll be hell to pay when the others find out.’
‘Well, we’re not exactly winning any international beauty pageants these days.’
Humour. A good sign.
His face grew serious. ‘Listen, I’m not really happy about –’
‘I’m going, Jake. And I know if you were up to it, you would be, too.’
He closed the door. He seemed to age five years in as many seconds. ‘I just lost a friend. I only just realised –’
‘I’ll be careful, Jake. I’ll come back.’ She was glad not to be on the polygraph.
He nodded absently, then came back to the surface. ‘There are ten teams: six British ones, two American, and two mixed British-Russian teams. You’ll be with Tac Team 8.’ He gave her a smile. ‘They’re the ones I trust the most.’
As he walked past her, she stopped him, pulled his face towards her and kissed him, because he needed it. Arash would have said she was projecting. Maybe she’d be right.
A thought struck her. The warhead was in a water-and-sewage-filled tunnel in the depths of London. Dark, cold, wet. A natural habitat for a creature like Salamander. Until now she’d presumed he would be long gone, directing the action from afar. But what if he was there, waiting, making sure the bomb went off on time? What if she met him underwater? Ten teams. She might not even end up in the channel. But she kept seeing his face, that bear-like presence.
She must have shivered, because Jake asked, ‘You okay?’
‘Never better,’ she answered, flashing a smile. ‘I just wish my favourite dive buddy was coming with me.’
She really meant it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sergeant Mallory stood two metres tall, was muscle-bound, had short-cropped red hair, and a ‘seen-and-heard-it-all-so-don’t-fuck-with-me’ expression. Which all would have been par for the course, except for one detail. Sergeant Mallory was female. She deftly manipulated the interactive map of the city projected on a large screen, and zoomed in on the target location. Nadia plus seven others, all male, studied it closely.
‘The tunnel is three metres in diameter, full of water and an indeterminate amount of sewage, and is seventy-five metres underground.’ She zoomed back out. ‘Access points are here, here and here. The army are locking the surrounding areas down right now, while three teams of divers are prepping to go in. The evacuation of London is ongoing, but the police have created corridors so our teams can get there in plenty of time. Each team has a nuclear warhead specialist with them.’
She drew back from the display. ‘Mr Jones is ours.’ She indicated a forty-something bespectacled man with ruffled hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses, who looked as if he belonged in a tweed jacket in a lecture hall, and seemed decidedly uncomfortable in combat fatigues fitted over a thin wetsuit. His handgun and holster were strapped around his waist the wrong way around. He’d never be able to draw it. Probably just as well.
‘Jones is our primary asset. If it comes down to our team, then we protect him at all costs. No point arriving at the warhead without him. It’s not a simple case of cut the blue wire.’
Jones piped up, his voice tinny. ‘Well, funnily enough, the very last –’
‘Thank you, Mr Jones. Now listen up, all of you. We’re in eighth place, well in reserve. But I want you all piano-wire sharp.’ She turned to Nadia, fixed her with hawk-sharp hazel eyes. ‘If it comes to it, you’re with me.’ It sounded as if the real reason was simply that she didn’t trust Nadia.
‘Lucky me,’ Nadia said. That came out the wrong way. She realised she wasn’t used to being told what to do by a woman.
Jones held up his hand, and waited.
‘Yes, Mr Jones?’
‘Isn’t seventy-five metres a very deep dive?’
Mallory stared at him, probably wondering how a nuclear physicist could get it so wrong. ‘If it was seventy-five metres of water, yes. But the water is basically in a channel three metres deep; it just happens to be seventy-five metres underground. Given that the channel is sloping, the maximum water pressure is actually equivalent to around fifteen metres of depth. You’ll be fine. No narcosis to worry about, and I doubt we’re even going to get wet. One of your good colleagues from Shrivenham or Devonport in the other teams will do the necessary, and we can all have a beer together.’
She cast him, and all of them, a rock-solid smile, the kind you knew you’d better play along with, which only had the effect of making Jones recede deeper behind his glasses.
Jones turned to Nadia, whispering conspiratorially. ‘My wife and children. Are they out of harm’s way?’
Nadia picked up her phone and dialled Jake.
‘Jake, are Mr Jones’s wife and family on evac yet?’ She held the phone close to her ear so Jones couldn’t hear the response.
‘What? Who?’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Good to know. I’ll tell him.’ She broke the connection. ‘Yes, Mr Jones. They’re on a chopper as we speak.’
Mallory tried to catch her eye, but Nadia kept eye contact with Jones, who was visibly relieved.
Which was just as well, as at that exact moment an explosion boomed outside. They turned as one to the rattling glass window. On the other side of the city a pillar of smoke and flame billowed high into the morning sky. Mallory snatched up her VHF radio just as Nadia’s phone beeped. A text, from Jake. One team down. She looked at her watch. Ten a.m. On the dot. She checked for the latest tweet from Salamander, separated by an hour.
Not a gas leak. A nuke. They were warned 31 hrs ago. There was time to evacuate. They lied to you. Six hours left.
The cat was out of the bag. No doubt part of Salamander’s plan. The evacuation would now get very messy, and hamper their efforts.
They all looked to Mallory. The sort of leader you’d follow to the end of the world, though not necessarily with a smile on your face.
‘We’re moving out,’ she said.
***
In the armoured black Range Rover, Nadia got a second text from Jake. Drone strike. Be careful. She was in the back seat in between Jones and one other commando, Mallory in
the front with another of her men driving. An identical vehicle was ahead, ferrying the rest of Mallory’s unit to the access point a mile away.
‘It was a drone strike,’ she half-shouted to Mallory, competing with the car’s revving engine and the pandemonium outside on Lambeth Bridge. She hung on as the car swerved around people on the road, and then had to brake hard. The lead Range Rover pulled away. She couldn’t help glance past Jones, over the side of the bridge. This is where it had all started for her, a little more than two years ago, underwater. That had been a drone strike too, but that time it had been her team’s drone.
Jones nudged her, and pointed downriver, past Westminster, towards the London Eye. She couldn’t spot what he’d seen. And then she did. A dot. Jones’s glasses clearly worked.
She shouted to Mallory. ‘There’s one headed straight for us, 4 o’clock!’
The commando on her right pulled up the automatic rifle that had been resting between his legs, and opened the window, while the driver floored the pedal, aiming to get to the other side and find tree cover. Nadia wasn’t sure it would help. The commando stuck the barrel of his weapon out the window, and she braced herself for the explosive sound of gunfire. Jones gripped her hand so hard it hurt, but she didn’t shake him off.
The dot was getting bigger. But too many people crowded the bridge. They weren’t going to make it.
Mallory shouted, ‘Stop the car.’ The driver did, screeching them all to a halt. ‘Greaves, take it down.’
‘Sh-shouldn’t we get out?’ Jones stammered.
Yes, and no, Nadia thought. Mallory wound down her window and fired two shots into the air, not even aiming at the drone. People scattered, and drew back from the vehicle.
Smart. Getting civilians out of the kill zone. And surprisingly humane, given the stakes. In Russia… Never mind.
Jones began fumbling with the door mechanism, but it was locked. Nadia turned to him, away from Greaves and the semi-intelligent missile seconds away. She shook Jones. ‘Look at me,’ she said. He did. He was sweating profusely. ‘These men are the best. Greaves won’t miss,’ she added, as if she knew him, and knew it for a fact. ‘It will help if you stay quiet and don’t move.’
On the inside, she wasn’t so sure. Greaves was cutting it bloody fine. But she stayed locked on to Jones, willing him to trust her, and the team.
A crack like thunder discharged inside the vehicle. She swivelled her head just in time to spot the drone as it plunged into the Thames. The driver engaged the engine and they pulled away. ‘Nice one,’ Nadia said to Greaves. He made the tiniest nod – or it could have been just a bump on the road – and didn’t look at her.
‘Not again,’ Jones said, and just as they took the roundabout at the end of the bridge to turn towards the city, she followed his gaze and saw a second drone, just passing Big Ben. But it veered to the right, suddenly, heading straight for the tree-lined bank. Mallory began shouting down the VHF, but they all knew it was a lost cause. The ball of flame mushroomed a couple of hundred metres in front of them. The lead Range Rover. No chance of survivors.
‘Stop the car,’ Mallory said. ‘Everyone out.’
Nadia wondered how they were being tracked. Simon, probably. He’d thought ahead. Salamander had the make of vehicle and the licence plates; he just needed to hack into the camera surveillance system, which was pretty much everywhere in London.
They unloaded their dive gear from the car’s boot and hobbled towards a parked police van. Six policemen in riot gear were trying to maintain order, and failing completely. The fireball two hundred metres down the road had people running scared. Still, everyone gave Mallory and her armed crew a wide berth.
‘I need to commandeer your vehicle,’ she said, more a statement than a request.
The lead police officer, a podgy, silver-haired man close to retirement, looked them over, then thumbed behind him to the burning wreckage. ‘Friends of yours?’
Mallory nodded.
‘Take it.’
The copper stopped Nadia with his arm as she went to pass him, his face crinkled with a lifetime of worry lines. He spoke softly. ‘Is it really a nuke?’
She couldn’t think of any reason to lie. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But it won’t go off early.’ She didn’t know that. ‘You still have five hours.’
He stared at the ground a moment, and let go of her arm, then began shouting at his men to get the van through, and get all these people orderly. He picked up a loudhailer, and began talking to the tide of people, telling them they had plenty of time, best not to rush and fall and end up lame when they might need to run later. A few people seemed to hear his words, realised this was classic understated British humour, and they slowed down. She looked out the back as the van drove off, watching him, recalling one of the few films she’d seen, Titanic, and thought of the band playing until the end. She could imagine that copper, a trombone instead of a loudhailer.
The best of British.
A third explosion, south of the river. No text from Jake this time. So she texted him.
SMDR using London cams. We switched cars. Tell other teams.
Already on it, came the reply.
She flinched away from the window as a lightweight drone appeared right next to her. Too light to carry serious explosives. She spotted a mini-camera. Her phone pinged: another text from Jake. I’m with you. Then it zoomed away, probably to avoid signalling that this was the van.
She leant back, feeling a little better, then did the sums. Five hours plus to go. Two teams taken out, theirs cut in half. They were now in sixth place. Yet she knew, she just knew it would come down to them. And for once in her life she prayed she was wrong, then decided that wasn’t nearly good enough.
Turning to Jones, who still looked as if he wanted to bolt out of the van and run away like everyone else was, she asked him to tell her about defusing the warhead.
‘Why should I tell you?’ he said. ‘If I do, will you let me go and join my family? I can’t even concentrate until I know they’re safe!’ His eyes flitted everywhere, trying to take in all the people rushing past in the opposite direction to the one where he was headed. His skin looked pale and waxy, as if he might throw up. She needed to ground him.
‘I lied about your family,’ she said.
‘W-what?’ He snapped back to attention, focused on her.
‘They’re still stuck in London. Well inside the blast radius. So, you need to stop shitting in your pants and get it together. Now, tell me about the warhead.’
He put his hands into his unruly dark hair and tugged at it, then let out a scream of rage. ‘Why me?’ he shouted, near tears.
‘Because,’ she paused for effect. ‘Because, like us, you’re the best of the best at what you do.’
He bit down on a knuckle, then reached into a pocket, tried another, and produced a computer tablet. He switched it on, and Nadia saw a schematic of the warhead. He started talking.
Greaves leaned close to her ear, and whispered, ‘Nice one.’ She glanced forward and caught Mallory’s hazel eyes in the rear-view mirror. They were smiling.
***
They rounded a corner and were faced by an oncoming tsunami of people. The van ground to a halt. Sirens, car and bus horns, people shrieking and shouting. They just kept coming, like ants out of a collapsing anthill. Which wasn’t far off the mark. People were evacuating high-rise office buildings and haemorrhaging from the underground stations like blood from slit veins.
‘Why isn’t the Tube working?’ Nadia shouted above the din. ‘That should be an easy way to evacuate people.’ Her mind wanted to believe they would stop the bomb from going off, but she also kept imagining a boiling cloud of white-hot fire sweeping outward, incinerating all the people who didn’t get out fast enough. She imagined London, a decimated pile of silent, smoking ash. She suddenly felt giddy, nauseous, and clasped Jones’s wrist for support. He didn’t speak, just placed a clammy hand on top of hers. It
helped. She took a breath, got a grip of herself, and removed her hand.
Mallory was yelling something down the radio. She turned around to Nadia, Jones and Greaves. ‘Bastard has unleashed a cyber-virus. Trains have all stopped, doors jammed – thousands are trapped in tunnels, and lighting has been cut. It’s pretty ugly down there.’
At least Jones no longer looked like he wanted to make a run for it. The van was jostled and bumped by the frenetic exodus all around. They waited fifteen minutes. They still had plenty of time, well over four hours. And yet… The more Nadia thought about it, the more uncomfortable she was. Salamander had spent months planning this, maybe two years. He’d given them thirty-seven hours’ warning, but was confident they could not stop him. And she now firmly believed he was here, to see it through.
Sergei had been right. This wasn’t a megalomaniac or a despot trying to gain power; it was about a message, a societal game-changer, and Salamander would die making sure it happened. Whatever else, he wasn’t a coward. And that conviction, that authenticity, probably played a large part in why his operatives – including Sergei and Simon – were willing to die for him.
Another blast echoed around the buildings, and Mallory bent her torso almost flat over the dashboard to try and see the telltale plume of smoke, but there were too many high-rises. Nadia’s phone beeped.
He just bombed the main access point. Another two teams down. Sniper fire at second access.
Salamander was playing with them. And there was the problem. We’re all playing his game, his rules. She asked Mallory for her military tablet, which she passed back to Nadia while bellowing down the radio trying to gain instructions, struggling to hear the response. Nadia called up the map. Three access points, one just blown up. Who was to say he wouldn’t blow up the other two? But if that was the case, why wait? Why not blow them up now? She couldn’t see the strategy, the Go playbook move Salamander was employing. She needed to enlist Jones and Greaves, so she told them what she was thinking.