37 Hours

by J. F. Kirwan

  Greaves answered first. ‘Maybe he blew up the main access because the teams were about to get through. He’ll only blow them if a team is about to succeed.’

  ‘Could be,’ she said. ‘But why wait? Why not blow them all now?’

  ‘Maybe he’s using the bombs to further terrorise people,’ Greaves said.

  She glanced through the front windscreen, took in the scared faces. If so, it was certainly working. But she still felt they were missing something. ‘Jones, you’re quiet. Care to share?’

  ‘I…’

  Nadia and Greaves exchanged glances. ‘What?’ she asked.

  Jones shifted, then seemed to close in on himself.

  ‘What is it? What are you thinking?’

  ‘I… It’s nothing. You’re the tacticians, not me, I just play…’

  Nadia noticed Jones would barely look at her, and not at all at Greaves.

  ‘What is it you play?’

  Jones squirmed, and said something she didn’t catch. But Greaves did. He shook his head, a grin infecting his stubbly face. ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’

  Jones took one fast glance at Greaves and then looked down. ‘See…just…forget it.’

  Nadia was about to reproach Greaves, but she didn’t have to, because Greaves reached across and placed a hand on Jones’s shoulder. ‘Hey, don’t worry. My brother plays it all the time. Big league. It’s all about tactics and strategy, right?’

  Jones looked up, at first cautiously, to see if Greaves was taking the piss, then he nodded.

  ‘So…?’ Nadia asked.

  Suddenly Jones came out of his shell, and began talking fast. ‘He’s distracting us, using up all our resources, keeping us focused on these points, letting us believe we can break through, because we have time. He’s keeping us focused here, because there’s a secret passage.’

  What? Was he being serious? But Greaves was listening. He took the lead.

  ‘So, he’s hiding something, a vulnerability, one he can’t control.’

  Nadia joined in. ‘Which is…?’

  ‘It’s time-dependent,’ Jones said. ‘He just needs to keep us busy for a certain amount of time. After that, the secret passage won’t work. Then he’ll blow up the access points, and it will be game over, even if there are hours left.’

  Nadia stared at Jones. It sounded like how Salamander would think. ‘So, where’s the secret passage?’

  Jones took the tablet from Nadia. ‘He’s making us focus here.’ He stretched his fingers to the edges of the screen. ‘We need to shift perspective.’ He made the map grow smaller, so that they now saw a much larger part of London. Nadia looked at the serpentine twist of the Thames, and suddenly she got it. A sewage channel had to come out somewhere, a treatment plant. They traced it. There was a fourth access point, downriver. She grabbed the tablet, and leaned forward towards Mallory.

  ‘We have to change tactics,’ she yelled.

  Mallory turned, her face granite. ‘Look, if you want to get the hell out –’

  ‘No!’ Nadia pointed at the map. ‘We have to find the channel exit. That’s our entry point.’

  Mallory stared at her, then the map, then to Greaves, who nodded.

  ‘It’s two miles away,’ Nadia said, ‘and here we can’t move an inch. And it’s going to take hours swimming from there all the way back up the channel to reach the warhead.’

  ‘That’s the point, Sarge,’ Greaves said. ‘If we don’t set off soon, there’s no way to reach it in time. Hell, we may already be too late.’

  Nadia leaned as close as she could. ‘Salamander doesn’t care if people evacuate. He wants to leave a scar on this planet; he wants to obliterate London. The other teams can still try. But we need to take the back route.’

  ‘Jones,’ Mallory said. ‘You agree? Because it’s a lot of finning.’

  Jones took off his glasses, wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, replaced them, and swallowed hard. ‘I concur.’

  Mallory scouted around, then pointed, talking to the driver. ‘Over there. The slip-road down to the water.’ The driver must have said something, because Mallory shouted, ‘Then run them over!’ so loudly that a few people outside suddenly veered away from the van.

  It took a few minutes, and they did bump quite a few people out of the way, but they reached the slipway down to a jetty. Nadia texted Jake.

  Change of plan.

  ***

  It took over an hour for a police boat to pick them up and escort them downriver, past Westminster, St Paul’s, London Bridge, the Tower of London and finally underneath Tower Bridge, as they headed towards the Docklands and the water treatment plant housing the channel’s exit point. During the river trip no one said much, besides Mallory who kept barking orders down the VHF.

  Nadia and Jones watched London’s population bleeding out of every orifice, while smoke continued to stretch up into the sky in four distinct locations: two in central London, two in the financial district. Helicopters – at least a dozen of them, half of them armed, hovered and buzzed around like mosquitoes. No aeroplane jet trails criss-crossed the noon sky – she guessed civil airspace had been closed over London.

  But the evacuation was painfully slow, massive walls of people jammed here and there, police choppers trying to direct the herds of men, women and children. Several passenger ferries were trying to help, but it was low tide, and only flat-bottomed boats, or fast police boats like the one they were on, could navigate the shallow waters.

  She noticed that even Greaves seemed taut and withdrawn. ‘You okay?’ she said.

  His face was ashen, and she thought he wasn’t going to respond, but then he did. ‘I was in Aleppo when it started. The shelling. Much worse than this, but still. You go abroad and it’s extreme, but you can take it. But this is my home. Never thought I’d see this.’

  Jones joined in. ‘He’s already won, hasn’t he? Salamander, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ Nadia replied. ‘This is tough, but survivable. London can recover from this. But not from a nuke.’

  Jones persisted. ‘But even if the warhead doesn’t detonate, he’s made his point. The governments kept it quiet, lied to the people; even now they’re doing it. That’s why he chose thirty-seven hours, because all the simulations – the realistic ones that is – say it will take thirty-six hours to get ninety-nine per cent of people out of London. He’s choreographed all of this, and it’s running to plan.’

  Nadia didn’t know what to say. Jones was right. Each time she and others thought they had an opportunity to take Salamander down, it turned out to be part of his scheme and played out to his advantage. But then she recalled the colonel’s harsh words. She was a wild card. And so was Jones. There was still an outside chance.

  Jones pushed his glasses back up his nose. ‘My wife and daughter. They’ll be out in time, won’t they?’

  Nadia nodded. ‘Listen, if you –’

  ‘I have a bomb to defuse,’ Jones said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ And then he laughed. ‘Except up shit creek without a paddle.’

  Nadia laughed, Greaves too, and it felt good, though it didn’t last. Maybe a few million would get out in time. But the rest? On the plane over, Sergei had told her the sub was experimental, carrying one of the highest yield warheads ever. She’d asked for blast radius. Ten miles, he’d said, if detonated aerially. It was underground, she didn’t know what that would do to the bomb’s reach except cut it down dramatically, but it still would create a massive crater, visible from space, and could easily take a million or two with it.

  They heard a long scream behind them, and turned as one just in time to see someone plunge to their death from overcrowded Tower Bridge. The police boat skipper looked to Mallory, to see if she wanted to turn the boat around, in case… Mallory shook her head once and gazed forward again. Reluctantly, the others did too.

  The boat slowed and headed to shore. Mallory turned around to face them. ‘Okay, it’s all sor
ted; all the gear is here. We’ll –’

  Blood splashed outward from her chest as a rifle shot split the air. Mallory fell forward. Nadia shoved Jones to the floor and lay on top of his back, her head down. Greaves also dived for cover, but unsheathed his weapon and let off a salvo of bullets on rapid-fire. The boat slewed left and right, the engine keening loudly, spray drenching everyone. Another rifle crack, a grunt, and a second body hit the deck, this time the skipper.

  Nadia shouted to Jones to stay flat as she vaulted over the central bench to grab the wheel. A roar of rotors and a sudden downdraft of wind announced a helicopter gunship as it raced low overhead, swooping to draw fire. Its forward guns let rip, strafing a swanky pea green apartment block set back from the river. Windows shattered on the top floor, sending a waterfall of glass to the concrete below. The big gun continued firing as Nadia beached the boat and shut off the engines.

  Greaves had the VHF to one ear even as he scoured the shore. ‘Sniper neutralised,’ he said. He sprinted up the beach, gun held high.

  Nadia took a look at Mallory, her face marble white. One of her men tended to her, trying to staunch the blood flow. ‘Go!’ Mallory gurgled, blood spilling from her lips. Punctured lung. Mallory tried to shove the commando away as well.

  ‘Don’t leave her,’ Nadia said.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he replied, then he gripped Jones’s arm. ‘Go deactivate the warhead.’ He turned to Nadia. ‘And you, go kill that motherfucker!’

  Jones was transfixed by the bloody scene: the dead skipper, their leader suddenly cut down, bleeding inside and out. Nadia recognised his bewilderment. All those years playing games, imagining people being killed, but not really, just toy or virtual soldiers you could reboot next time you were bored and need a little entertainment. Best not to let him dwell on it.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, just as Greaves came back for them.

  ‘It’s clear,’ he said.

  The three trotted up the muddy bank until they reached gravel, then concrete. The helicopter had landed, spilling out commandos who took up defensive positions around a white hut, while another chopper hovered, marauding, an eagle hunting for prey. Armed police arrived in two vehicles. Should have been here a long time ago to secure the area. Traffic, hold-ups, whatever fucking excuse. And now Mallory was… She might still make it. One lung. Fifty-fifty.

  But there was someone she hadn’t expected to see. She raced towards him. ‘Jake, what are you doing here? You should be coordinating the operation.’

  He looked like hell, was clearly in pain, but managed a grim smile. ‘Missed you, too.’ He nodded towards the boat. ‘Mallory?’

  ‘She’s one tough lady. But how did Salamander know we were coming here?’

  He scanned the area, as if the answer might be there. She did the same. The sniper’s location, a glass-fronted building, wasn’t the best. He’d had to set up in a hurry. Which meant Salamander hadn’t initially guarded this position, so… Their eyes met.

  ‘A second mole,’ she said.

  He nodded ruefully. ‘I began to suspect it. Partly why I came here, or, rather, why I left there. I began to question how Simon could have covered his tracks so well, unaided. We’ve been debriefing Arash ever since, as she knew him best, and she’s being more than cooperative, but there’s still a lot of gaps.’

  The ground shook, then shook again. The double-boom echoed around the empty streets. They both turned to watch two new fans of smoke and flame burst into the sky. Nadia didn’t need to check the map. The other two remaining access points. They needed to go now. She ran over to Greaves, who was briefing Jones and getting him kitted up. She stared around at all the gear. Most of it looked familiar, except the full-face diving mask.

  Greaves saw her studying it. ‘Infrared vision, if we need it. It’s a sewage tunnel, right?’

  ‘Mallory thought of everything,’ she said.

  Greaves’s lips pressed tighter, and he went back to kitting up Jones, then himself. She began donning her gear. Jake arrived to help her on with the slimline stab jacket and rebreather system.

  ‘How much time do we have?’ she asked.

  ‘Two hours, more or…’ He stopped himself.

  She knew why. Less wasn’t an option. ‘Is it enough?’

  ‘Salamander doesn’t think so.’ He began checking her gear.

  ‘Maybe you should evacuate, Jake. In case.’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Someone needs to be around…after.’

  He leaned on her shoulder, bent his head forward, as if catching his breath. ‘Lorne, maybe Mallory, close to a hundred soldiers and agents, all gone, Nadia. And you, you’re going down there.’

  She made to speak, but he placed his finger across her lips. ‘Besides…’ He stood up straight, and pulled out a smartphone displaying a grainy video. She watched, trying to see what it showed. Someone disappearing into a tunnel. A large man. Very large. He turned, aimed a weapon, and the video froze. He had dead eyes.

  ‘Salamander’s down there,’ Jake said. ‘This was taken right before he blew up the last access point.’

  Nadia’s mouth ran dry. He’s at the warhead. Guarding it. Waiting for her. She’d still thought he might do this remotely, or leave it to one of his men. But no. He was going to see it through, personally.

  ‘Sorry, but best you know.’

  ‘He could detonate it at any time. Why doesn’t he, and get it over with?’

  Jones answered. She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. ‘Psychology and tech,’ he said. ‘First, psychology: he wants to send a message. That message is more important than the bomb itself detonating. He must wait at least thirty-six hours, or else the message will fail; governments will successfully spin the blame back onto him as a crackpot. Second, there’s the tech itself. Nuclear detonation time devices aren’t simple egg-timers. There are all sorts of fail-safes built in, unless he has a really good nuclear weapons specialist on hand.’

  ‘He doesn’t,’ Nadia said, recalling what her father had done while working for Salamander, ensuring the specialist had been killed. Thank you.

  ‘Well then,’ Jones continued. ‘You can’t suddenly speed them up or cancel and restart. If you stop the countdown, at least one hour has to elapse before it can be reset, even if you reset it to one second.’

  Jake faced Jones. ‘Wait a minute, so that means if we arrive early, say two hours before the target time –’

  ‘Precisely,’ Jones said. ‘He could stop it and reset it and then try and hold out for another hour, then detonate it one second later. It would still be in that last hour, so his message, his argument, would still stand.’

  Nadia got it. ‘Which means we can’t arrive too early, nor, obviously, too late.’

  ‘How long do you need to defuse it?’ Jake asked.

  ‘At least forty minutes, maybe longer. I’ve never done it underwater before.’

  Nadia did the math. They had to arrive within the last hour. Between thirty-six and thirty-seven hours. It would be tight.

  ‘You’d better get going,’ Jake said. ‘I’ve assigned three more divers to go with you, Jones and Greaves. Protect Jones. He’s –’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘One last thing. We’re going to try and excavate down through the rubble from the last explosion towards the warhead’s location. It’s seventy-five metres, and we probably won’t make it in time, but we have to try.’

  She knew he wanted to come with her, and would want to be there if the surface team managed to dig through to the channel. But MI6 needed him running the op, and watching things carefully, for one very good reason.

  ‘Find the second mole,’ she said. Then she and the four other divers entered the metal door, and started down the steps to the flooded tunnel that would lead them to a primed nuclear warhead, and the deadliest man on the planet.

  ***

  When they reached the tunnel access hatch, and Greaves heaved it open, th
ey all peered into the dark, swirling water. Jones touched her arm. ‘Why don’t you look scared?’ he asked.

  A good question. Because in fact she felt as if Salamander was watching her, as if he could reach inside her, close his fist around her heart, and crush the life out of her. But then she recalled her father, stoic to the end, never giving fear the time of day. She flushed Salamander from her head. He was in the tunnel, in a river of shit where he belonged.

  ‘Just stick close to me, Jones, and you’ll be okay.’

  They entered, one by one, slipping into the black water, and they all switched to infrared, and began finning forward. She recalled that the first time she’d seen Salamander was via infrared, and it had made him seem like the devil. But that was the way fear worked. The myth was the source of his power. At the end of the day he was a man. A bullet in the head or the heart and he’d be just another corpse, a sack of meat and bone. What the world needed right now was a stone-cold killer. Her father had trained her for this. So had Kadinsky. And in their own ways, so had Lorne and Bransk.

  The dead were all on her side.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was the worst dive on the planet. Shit, literally. It wasn’t one hundred per cent sewage, more like swimming through filthy water, but every now and again… She wiped some sludge – as she preferred to think of it – from the outside of her full-face dive mask. The only exposed parts were her hands, encased in lightweight, non-waterproof gloves.

  Greaves had insisted they each drink a litre of water before starting, to avoid dehydrating, as well as swallowing a quinine pill to avoid muscle cramps. The consequence was obvious for a ninety-minute swim, and Nadia had already been twice, her pee flushing out from her ankle seals. Given where she was swimming, it hardly mattered. If she survived, she promised herself the longest shower and body scrub in history.