by Max Kinnings
“Okay, so it’s one minute until noon,” said Denning. “I’m just going to check that you haven’t stuck me on some secure link and I’m not going global. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?” The sound of Denning’s fingers tapping on a keyboard came through the speakers.
“I knew he’d check that,” muttered Calvert.
“That’s fine,” said Denning. “Good to see that you haven’t tried to censor me or do anything stupid. By my watch it’s noon, so I guess it’s time for me to explain what we’re all doing here.” As he said this, there was a series of screams from a woman in an adjoining train carriage as she succumbed to a fit of hysteria.
“Another of London Underground’s happy customers reacting to today’s unfortunate disruption of the Northern Line service,” said Denning, smiling. He was as calm and composed as ever. The circus he had created was nothing to do with two-way communication; it was a performance, a well-rehearsed and carefully scripted performance, and one that he had looked forward to for some time.
“For those of you who don’t already know, my name is Thomas Robson Denning. Tommy. I’m a twenty-five-year-old ex-soldier. I’m also a British subject. My mother and father were British and their mothers and fathers before them. I don’t make the point because I’m obsessed by racial purity, it’s just to show you what I’m not. I’m not a Muslim fundamentalist from Africa, Asia, or the Middle East. I’m not the accepted archetype of a modern terrorist.”
Denning’s roundabout admission that he was indeed a terrorist served to twist the nerves yet further in Ed’s stomach.
“I come from a country of supposed democracy, freedom, and peace, a country opposed to oppression and cruelty. But when I look around me, that’s not what I see. What I see is a society that feels the need to lie and cheat and deceive. There is a war going on in the world, a war between good and evil played out in a series of ongoing battles for hearts and minds. Wherever you look, propaganda is at work. The news networks peddle lies and untruths in order to further the aims and goals of the people in charge. The only way that I can broadcast this message is by utilizing the Internet, for many lost souls a den of filth and yet also the last bastion of free speech. Propaganda serves not to make an objective study of the truth but to incite. So I want believers everywhere to see that what I am doing here today is an act of incitement. I say this as a Christian and not a Muslim but I say it, standing shoulder to shoulder with my Muslim friends. I call on all Muslims and Christians to see beyond the lies of their governments and rather than fighting between each other, unite and fight the one true enemy. This is a war between believers and nonbelievers and standing here today, in front of the peoples of the world, I am igniting the spark.”
Denning’s voice was rising. His London accent was becoming more pronounced. The image he had cultivated at the start of his speech, of a reasoned, well-balanced individual with a message to impart, was beginning to fade as the firebrand preacher took its place.
“Make no mistake about this, I am a global insurgent, and I stand alongside my brothers and sisters to fight for what I believe in, a spirituality based on Christian and Islamic values, the belief in one God, prayer, peace, quiet contemplation; and I fight against the enemy, the forces of hypocrisy, greed, corruption, and war.
“Our so-called freedom represents destruction and deceit in the name of commerce and business, while resistance to this insidious plague is painted as terrorism and intolerance. But every action has a reaction and the truth is that democracy and capitalism afford us no more freedom than the world’s most repressive regimes.
“My authority comes from one place and one place only, the Bible. ‘For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall guide them into fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.’ Revelation chapter seven, verse seventeen. I, Tommy Denning, am that lamb. And here beneath the London streets, I am about to guide the world to the ‘fountains of waters.’ I stand alongside my fellow believers and say that it is time for an eye for an eye—or rather—a terror for a terror. Vengeance is a simple motivation but it is also pure and just. It is something that people can understand. Know this: I’m not some outsider, I’m just a normal guy who leads a good and spiritual life and wants to make a difference. And as long as there are people in the world who are downtrodden and exploited and feel no security then their oppressors will feel no security either. The longer the godless oppressors can keep us divided, the longer they will keep us downtrodden. The war starts today between believers and nonbelievers. All those who believe, have faith, all those who have God in their hearts, must rise up behind me and prepare for battle.”
As Ed listened to Denning’s words, just as millions around the world were doing, he felt fear creep through his innards. He had never felt it so acutely before. Not just for all the passengers on the train but for himself. He knew as he listened to Tommy Denning saying the words that, unlike every other subject he had come across in his years of crisis intervention and hostage negotiation, he was afraid of him.
12:06 PM
Northern Line Train 037, second carriage
Varick moved toward the doors between the second and first carriages. The passengers were now tightly packed together following the shooting by the hijacker and their nerves were shot to pieces. No one knew exactly how many people had been killed; numbers varied from between five and ten. Whatever the truth, Tommy had crossed the line and now it was up to Varick to stop him. He felt no fear, God was with him. There was no rush. It was important that Tommy made his intentions clear to the world before Varick finished him.
Although he was moving against the tide, people were only too pleased to let him through as his displacement meant that there would be just that little bit more space behind him. And as he approached the first carriage, there was a collective assumption that he was there to help them, save them even, and he did nothing to dispel it. He was there to save them.
“I wouldn’t get any closer,” said a heavyset man in his late thirties, who looked almost drunk with trembling nervous energy. “He’s already killed lots of people.”
“I’m here to help,” said Varick.
The man stepped aside and muttered, “Thank God.”
Varick kept his head down as he moved along the now deserted section of carriage. Up ahead, he could see Denning through the windows in the connecting doors.
There was a body by the door, a man in a suit with his head resting in a puddle of congealing blood. But Varick remained focused on Tommy in the first carriage, who stood in front of a piece of bed sheet slung between the handrails set into the ceiling of the train. On it was a laptop computer into which he spoke. Varick stepped over the body and crouched down behind the door to wait. It was essential that the authorities had a full understanding of what Tommy was going to do before he acted. Tommy wasn’t the only one mindful of his own publicity.
Varick listened as Tommy reveled in his newfound celebrity. It was the rambling of a fantasist but he had to admit that it was more coherent and rehearsed than he had expected. He’d seen him around Madoc Farm for the past few weeks, brooding, deep in thought, scribbling in his notebook. What he said was more cogent than the ranting of your average religious fanatic—although he knew that religious fanatic was what both he and Tommy would be seen as by the vast majority of people. But if he could only stop Tommy carrying out his mission, turn the tide, and make the world see that Cruor Christi were saviors and not aggressors, then he might succeed in changing people’s perceptions.
Whether Tommy had managed to achieve the global media saturation that he hoped for was immaterial. This was a big enough event in its own right to make the news across the world. Varick’s mother and father, elderly as they now were, sitting in their home in New Orleans—what would they make of this? What would they make of their son if he managed to save the lives of hundreds of people? He would be a disappointment no more. At last his mother would be able to speak of him wi
th pride.
Tommy spoke about freedom and democracy. What did he know about freedom and democracy? Twenty-five years old and thought he knew it all. Varick hoped that in his last sentient moments as the bullets tore into him from the Smith & Wesson that there might be some realization that he was wrong, that he had chosen the wrong path. And although he knew that he should also hope with all his heart that Tommy might offer himself up to God’s mercy and be saved, there was another part of him—there was no denying it—that hoped that Tommy’s pleas would be refused and God would turn his back on him and damn him for all eternity.
His geopolitical diatribe at an end, Denning talked about the underground river, the River Lime that he had redirected into the tunnel with his explosives. But as Varick listened to the words, it occurred to him that it was not Tommy Denning who was speaking them but the devil himself.
It was up to Varick to carry out an exorcism.
As he looked back down the carriage behind him, the people cowering at the end of it stared at him, mesmerized. He nodded once, a simple gesture that conveyed so much: they must be patient, he would act, all in good time. He chanced a quick glance through the window in the door. Tommy was less than twenty feet away. He couldn’t miss.
12:13 PM
Northern Line Train 037, first carriage
George watched him as he spoke into the webcam. Denning was nervous at first—almost fluffed his lines a couple of times—but now George could tell he was building up to the money shot. When he came to the part about the River Lime, and how the holy water would fill the tunnel in a few hours, George understood the twisted genius of the situation that Denning had engineered. It was indeed an egg timer. Unless the authorities did exactly what he wanted them to do, the passengers—however many hundreds of them there were—would drown. The authorities were clearly reluctant to storm the train on account of Denning’s threats about explosives rigged in the carriages, threats which, just like the boast of there being multiple hijackers throughout the train, George suspected were untrue.
Denning was reflected in the little black eye of the webcam. How many people were watching him? How many more would watch the recording of this in the coming weeks, months, or years? George had to hand it to him, it was an audacious concept. George and his family were part of a historical moment, but one he would have traded his life to be excluded from. No, that wasn’t true; he wouldn’t have traded his life. Anything, even this, was better than losing his life. He didn’t want to die; he had never wanted to die less than he did at that moment. All he could console himself with was that he would know soon enough whether this was a situation that could be resolved or not. It all came down to Denning’s demands. Whatever they were. If he wanted something mundane and domestic, something like the release of a relative from prison or even something political that might be negotiated then there might be a possible resolution. But George had a sickening feeling that Denning was not a man who wanted to pursue anything straightforward or reasonable. This was not a straightforward or reasonable way of getting the world’s attention. Whatever he wanted, it would be something complex and difficult. George hoped the authorities would give in to it—lie if they had to—tell Denning that they would do what he wanted, even if they reneged on the deal later. They would have to do whatever it took. That was their job.
Listening to Denning, he could tell that he was building up to a finale. There was a relaxed manner in his tone, an acknowledgment that he was almost finished.
“You’re wondering why I’m doing this. You’re asking yourselves: what can possibly be worth all this? You want to know what my demands are. There are always demands, aren’t there? People don’t just do something like this for the sake of doing it. Do they?” Denning smiled and stared into the camera. “Well, I’ll tell you what my demands are. At present, there are thousands of gallons of water flowing into this tunnel, a tunnel that is beginning to fill up. So, it’s very simple. I have just one demand and it is this: that the people of the world should see my sacrifice and watch while everyone on this train, myself included, drowns.”
12:16 PM
Northern Line Train 037, second carriage
Through the windows in the adjoining doors, Varick could see Tommy standing in front of the hammock slung across the carriage on which there was a laptop computer. The hammock was fashioned from a bed sheet from Madoc Farm. The thick bluey-grey cotton was unmistakable. Varick had bought a job lot when they first moved in. They had money for more expensive sheets but he and Father Owen had agreed that a house of God was no place for fancy linen.
Tommy tapped away on the keys and the mouse pad, his head visible from the chin upward above the back of the laptop lid. The hammock and the computer concealed his upper body, Varick’s preferred target. A bullet in his lower abdomen would be debilitating and excruciatingly painful but would not kill him. Not quickly enough anyway. It would have to be a head shot. The lower part of the face would be best, the site of the ideal entry wound being between the top lip and the nose so as to ensure that the exit wound destroyed the top of the spinal cord, leading to instant death.
All those years of target practice with this very gun, now they meant something, now they had value. And he knew that he mustn’t forget to aim slightly to the left. Not that it was a matter of forgetting; it was second nature, automatic.
There it was through the adjoining doors, the bullet’s ideal entry point, Tommy’s moustache of thick stubble. As Tommy continued to tap away on the laptop, Varick glanced back at the people behind him, cowering. Nearest to him was the large man who had spoken to him when he had made his way through the carriage. Their eyes met and Varick nodded to him: now was the time.
Turning back to the carriage up ahead, Varick stepped back from the window and raised the gun up in front of him. With the sight just over Tommy’s right cheek, when the gun kicked right, the .38 caliber bullet would strike him just below the nose punching a hole clean through his head, rendering him dead even before his body hit the floor of the carriage.
Heavenly Father, please steady the aim of this your humble servant as he consigns his fellow sinner, Tommy Denning, to your flock and begs forgiveness on his behalf, for he knows not what he does.
That would have to do. He didn’t have long. Tommy might look up at any moment.
He pulled the trigger and his hands braced the explosive kick, which sent the bullet on its God-given flight. And as the smoke cleared, he knew that it had reached its target when Tommy fell heavily to the floor. Evidence of the head wound was provided by blood spattered throughout the carriage and what his former NOPD colleagues might have referred to as “facial debris” which included a tooth that slid down a crimson slick on a window and then dropped to the floor with a faint click.
12:16 PM
Network Control center, St. James’s
The information that Denning was going to flood the tunnel had come as no surprise to Ed thanks to the driver’s ability to keep the radio link open. To hear him voice it in such a reasoned and clearly thought out way, however, was chilling. Ed Mallory could feel the pressure mount in the negotiating cell. The helicopters overhead had grown louder, the thrum of their engines and the thwok-thwok-thwok of their rotor blades had become more insistent than before. The government and the security forces were naked in the glare of the media arc light. Whatever the outcome of the scenario down there in the tunnel between Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road stations, blame would be apportioned and the appropriate necks would be on the block once the necessary excuses and buck-passing had been attempted. Ed was part of the process. His was one of the necks in waiting.
After Denning’s diatribe had finished, Laura came into the room to say that the members of COBRA were watching the live feed and the consensus was beginning to swing behind the notion of closing down the Tommy Denning Show. Hooper felt the same.
“Serina Boise is getting a lot of pressure on this,” said Laura.
“If you’re asking
me what I think,” said Ed, “I think we keep the line open. You heard what Denning said, if the link is broken or compromised in any way, he will start killing passengers. There is every possibility that if he is denied the oxygen of publicity then he will set off further explosives. His instant celebrity appears to be as important to him as his desire to kill all the passengers on the train. So faced with the option of killing those passengers either slowly as a piece of sick television, or quickly at the push of a button, he might take the latter option if denied the former. So my opinion, if it’s being sought, is that we take the option that buys us the most time and that is to let him keep talking.”
“Ed, I have to say that I don’t agree with you.” Hooper sounded more argumentative than ever and Ed toyed with the idea of telling him that he didn’t give a shit what he thought but decided that such an open demonstration of hostility would be bad for the morale of the team.
“Then we’ll have to agree to differ,” said Ed. “As far as I’m concerned, the line should stay open. It’s the only way that we can communicate with the hostage takers and the hostages.”
“Denning could be signaling to others above ground to set off further attacks.”
“He could be but I don’t think he is. Denning has his stage, this is all he’s ever wanted. There’s no way he wants anyone else to come along and steal the limelight from him. It’s all about him and his twisted hunger for celebrity.”
Hooper tried to butt in but Ed kept on talking: “As with the most cravenly ambitious reality star, Tommy Denning hungers for fame and recognition, and while he’s set on getting that he’s less dangerous. Take it away from him and he’s going to flip.”
Ed knew that as soon as he finished speaking, Hooper was going to come right back at him. When he did, the animosity in his voice was unmistakable.