Baptism

by Max Kinnings

  “Are you nearly done?” Ed made no attempt to conceal his impatience.

  “Shut your mouth.”

  Ed stood and waited as Conor went about his work. It had to be ten minutes they’d been down there, possibly twelve. Their estimation of where the point of the blast should be was wholly inexact and Conor was clearly uncertain regarding the quantity of Semtex needed to get through the tunnel wall. But somewhere, just a few feet away from where they stood were thousands of gallons of water pressing against the brickwork.

  3:07 PM

  Northern Line Train 037, first carriage

  Water had dribbled into his mouth through the wound in his face. Amid the earthy, oily flavors was a sweetness. It was something he had tasted before although he couldn’t remember when. It was comforting; it made him know that this was how things were meant to be.

  “When you got up this morning,” he said in George’s direction, “you were just a tube driver. A simple man, doing a simple job. And now you will die a prophet and rise again to sit with God.”

  “Don’t,” said George. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Feel the water, it’s cleansing you. It’s making you pure and whole. This is holy water, George.”

  “No it isn’t. It’s just water. Cold, dirty water.”

  George was afraid; he was suffering. Tommy forgave him. The water was up to his neck and it felt good. The pain in his face had begun to subside and he was filled with the glory of God. He knew the end to his suffering, to all their suffering, was close at hand. He felt a oneness with himself and the world and when he looked at George, he knew that he was his brother. They were fellow travelers on the same journey. He and George, his sister Belle, and everyone on the train. They would all die together and rise again.

  3:11 PM

  Leicester Square Tube Station, service tunnel

  “Come on, let’s clear off.” As soon as Ed heard Conor say the words, he started moving back along the tunnel. But Conor was slower than him as he unspooled the cable. Ed felt sicker with each passing second. Aware of what the people on the train might be going through, he felt as though he was succumbing to some sort of phantom suffocation all of his own. The air was thin and stale and it felt as though there just wasn’t enough of it to fill his lungs.

  “Can’t we move any faster?”

  “We mustn’t pull the wire out of the Semtex. It’s not like we’ve got time to go back and fix it all up again.”

  They carried on walking. Conor had managed to speed up but then he came to a standstill.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Ed.

  “Oh no. Oh shit.”

  “Conor, what is it?”

  “The wire’s come to an end.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, we’re only about fifty yards from the Semtex. If I rig up the detonator here and set it off, we might not survive.”

  “Just set it up, get it ready and give it to me. I’ll do it.”

  Conor hesitated. He was clearly thinking about it. Ed held out his hand.

  “No way,” said Conor. “You’ll only fuck it up, you blind bastard.”

  “Conor, I was responsible for your wife’s death. Don’t make me responsible for yours too.”

  “It’s too late for all that now. It won’t be the first time I’ve been blown up, will it?”

  Ed listened while Conor busied himself with the detonator.

  “I’d turn around, crouch down and cover your ears, if I were you. It probably won’t save you but it’s worth a go. Ready?”

  “Do it.”

  Conor flicked the switch on the detonator. Nothing happened. He flicked the switch again.

  Silence.

  3:12 PM

  Northern Line Train 037, first carriage

  The surface of the water slapped gently against George’s chin as he stood on the seat, the top of his head touching the ceiling of the carriage. The chain made his leg ache. He had managed to slide it up the pole; it was the only way that he could keep his head above the water. The pain fueled his anger and his anger was the last thing that kept him together, held back his final despair.

  “You murdering scumbag. Come on! This is your last chance to do the right thing.” George only had a few moments left before the water closed over his nose and mouth. He couldn’t help but think about all the time he had wasted earlier in the day. All those opportunities that he might have taken to disarm Denning or kill him, but here he was, immobilized as much by his own inadequacy and failure as he was by the chain around his leg. He had failed himself, he had failed his family and he had failed all the people on the train.

  He turned toward the few remaining inches of open window in the adjoining doors through which somewhere, his wife, the mother of his children, was clinging onto a handrail in the darkness and the filthy water.

  “Maggie?”

  Her voice came through clearly above the sounds of desperation in the distance. “Yes, George.”

  He had never heard her sound so afraid. It made him want to cry. What should he say to her? What could he say that would mean anything at a moment like this? There was only one thing, but just as he had decided to say it to her, she said it to him: “I love you.”

  “Oh Christ, I love you too, Maggie. And I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, George. This is not your fault.”

  “I’m just sorry for bringing this on us.”

  “We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “The right place at the right time,” muttered Denning. Maggie’s voice was stronger than before, more emotionally robust as she said, “Whatever delusion or madness is causing these people to do this, if there is a God, they’ll rot in hell for what they’ve done.”

  “I baptize thee in the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost.”

  George had wondered when Denning would start in on the religious bullshit again. Even if a deity were to make itself known to George now, during the final few moments of his life, he would curse him. Damnation would be infinitely preferable to some sort of union with an entity that thought that Denning’s pointless mass murder might in some way be a good thing.

  “Dear Lord, Our Father, accept these humble souls into the kingdom of heaven.”

  George looked at what remained of Denning’s face caked in semi-congealed blood, his head tilted to one side, sucking at the last few inches of warm fetid air through his nose, mouth, and the wound in his cheek, as he spoke to “the Almighty.”

  “There’s no one there, you stupid bastard,” said George. “No one’s listening.”

  But Denning kept right on, talking about the “sure and certain resurrection to eternal life,” and George put his head back in the water, so his ears were beneath the surface and he didn’t have to listen. This was how a condemned man must feel, thought George, waiting for the moment of death and fearing the pain that precedes it.

  Any hope that the authorities might be able to do something was fading fast and the sounds that were coming from along the train were the most gut-wrenching he had ever heard. Hundreds of people were about to die—and they knew it. George was about to die. His nose was pressed against the ceiling of the train. He had to time his breaths to coincide with those moments when the water dropped away from the ceiling before rising up to slap against it once more.

  No one was coming.

  George took a mouthful of water as he tried to suck up some air from the tiny pocket around his mouth. He choked, coughed, spluttered. More water entered his mouth. He choked again. He pressed his mouth against the ceiling and managed to suck up some air before the water closed over his mouth. It would be his last breath. The water he had swallowed made him choke once more but he fought the urge to spit out the air. He kept his mouth crushed against the ceiling preferring the sharp pain that it caused to the dull sickening ache in his oxygen-starved lungs.

  No one was coming.

  As though in recognition of his final breath, the
torch that Denning had hung from the handrail which had flickered and fluttered underwater for the past couple of minutes, finally gave out, throwing the submerged carriage into total darkness. The words echoed in George’s head as Joe Strummer sang “London Calling” for the final time.

  3:19 PM

  Northern Line Train 037

  There was silence along the submerged train. Spots of light from mobile phones and handheld computer devices—those whose light had survived the water—illuminated desperate faces, cheeks bulging, as men, women, and children held their breath, in final seemingly futile attempts to delay the inevitable.

  It is common knowledge that the person who panics uses more oxygen than the person who keeps calm. But who could keep calm when confronted with a single lungful of air and no apparent hope of another one? Panic reigned on the train and panic squandered all those lungfuls—all those hundreds of pockets of air—in those hundreds of bodies.

  Every single living passenger felt the agony of oxygen starvation, knowing that it was merely a prelude to oblivion. Most of the passengers clung to the rapidly depleting lungful of air that they had sucked in before the water reached the ceiling of the carriages. But there were some, like those who had chosen to jump from the Twin Towers rather than face the flames, who roared the oxygen from their lungs, hoping to reduce the torture and die more quickly.

  No one was coming.

  3:20 PM

  Leicester Square Tube Station, service tunnel

  Conor pressed the switch a third time. Still nothing.

  “What’s the matter?” Ed sounded scared.

  Conor didn’t reply, just threw the detonator against the wall of the tunnel. Plastic splinters and pieces of circuit board clattered to the stone floor.

  “Tell me what’s happening, Conor.”

  “I’m sticking the wires straight onto the battery.”

  Ed listened to Conor’s troubled breathing as he fiddled with the detonator’s components. Then he exhaled, long and hard. Ed didn’t have a chance to ask him what this meant. He felt the explosion before he heard it. The vibration in the ground traveled up through his feet and into his legs. Then came the sound, a deafening crack followed by a low rumbling thunder that swelled as it moved along the tunnel. The blast knocked both of them off their feet and sent them crashing to the floor turning over and over amid the smoke and billowing brick dust.

  Ed lost consciousness for a moment and he came around, as though waking from a dream, unsure whether he was asleep or not. His sunglasses had been knocked off in the blast. As he sat up, he started feeling for them. He did it automatically, without thinking.

  “Conor?”

  No reply. His hands scrambled around through the brick dust and pieces of rubble all around him.

  “Conor?”

  His fingers touched a warm liquid, which he raised to his nose. It was blood, either his or the Irishman’s.

  “Conor?”

  He got lucky. His fingers closed around the sunglasses and he put them on. The lenses were cracked but still in place, still providing a barrier between his sightless eyes and the outside world.

  “Conor?”

  “Jesus, my feckin’ head,” muttered Conor in a pained voice. And then Ed heard something else. It was slapping against the walls of the tunnel as it picked up speed and momentum. Conor’s words had allowed Ed to ascertain where he was. He moved toward him and managed to grab hold of his arm as both of them were engulfed in a tide of cold muddy water.

  3:21 PM

  Northern Line Train 037

  In the band of air in the apex of the train carriage ceilings, mouths opened up like flowers. Gasps erupted from the surface of the water as it dropped from the ceiling of the train and the passengers on Train 037 coughed and spluttered the first breaths of their new lives. There were some ruptured eardrums caused by the shockwaves of the explosion in the water and many heads ached, but everyone who had gone under had come out alive and they brought back with them hope that somehow their collective nightmare might now begin to recede.

  George sprayed out the stale air from his lungs and breathed in the new. Never had a breath tasted so good.

  “Maggie?”

  It was a struggle to keep his mouth above the water and his voice was tremulous and weak and unlikely to reach her in the next carriage. Fear made him desperate and the desperation made him shout louder.

  “Maggie!” He heard a voice but he couldn’t be sure if it was hers so he called again. This time when she responded he knew. She was alive.

  And so was Denning, close by, somewhere in the darkness. George reached out and the fingers of his right hand touched Denning’s face. He could hear him sucking air into his lungs, breathless from oxygen starvation.

  “George?” He sounded confused, disorientated. This wasn’t in the plan. George said nothing but as his hand brushed against the wound in Denning’s cheek, he curled his fingers around the bottom edge of it as though it were a handle and gripped tightly. Denning emitted a scream of acute pain and rage but George was not going to let go and he pulled Denning’s head toward him by his mangled cheek. With his other hand, he tried to find his eyes but Denning started flailing at him, lashing out at the source of the pain. A fist caught a glancing blow against George’s forehead but it lacked power and precision and George brought his left hand around and approximating the target in relation to the position of his right hand, he started firing punches at Denning’s head. The water dulled his fist’s trajectory and there was another blow from Denning, this time more powerful and desperate but still not enough to stop him.

  The chain around his leg, anchoring him to the vertical pole tore at the skin around his calf muscle but no amount of discomfort was going to stop him. Denning’s next strike, however, was altogether more brutal and well equipped. The square barrel of the Browning automatic whipped across George’s nose. He couldn’t contain his reflexes, which made his hands retract and paw at his bleeding face.

  Denning flailed around in the water swinging the gun at George, trying to hit him again. They struggled as a sound grew louder outside the train, a sound made incongruous by its location in the flooded tunnel. It was getting closer. It was the sound of a boat’s outboard engine.

  3:23 PM

  Leicester Square Tube Station, Northern Line Tunnel

  Andy spent a lot of time thinking about the types of operation that he might find himself involved with. Much of it was just daydreaming. There was plenty of waiting around in this job after all. But he had never envisaged this. A hijacked tube train was one of the scenarios they had discussed at a seminar only recently. No one joined the SAS to sit around in rooms listening to people talking and pointing to things on blackboards but he did enjoy devising resolutions to hypothetical crisis situations. And he felt that most of the potential situations had been covered during his ten years on the job. When the call came through that the terrorists were flooding the tunnel, he knew that this was something new, something that had never entered the collective mind of the security services and the powers that be. As with 9/11, the terrorists’ imagination was one step ahead.

  It had been decided that there would be two teams, one in Tottenham Court Road station and one in Leicester Square station at either end of the tunnel. When news of the flooding arrived, word came from on high that those with advanced diving skills were to make up two patrols of four. But by the time all the operational necessities had been seen to and all the equipment put in place, including one IRC, inflatable raiding craft, for each team, they were informed that the possibility of further explosions meant that an attempt to storm the train could not be sanctioned. Both teams were told to take up positions at a safe distance, far enough away to avoid any potential sniper fire. There they were told to wait while ongoing negotiations were made with the terrorists.

  Andy was given operational control of Group A, the team to the south of the train operating out of Leicester Square station. He and his three men—Pat, Todd, and Sm
ithy—waited in the water holding onto the inflatable as the level rose.

  When Pat had said that he could see someone swimming toward them through his night scope, Andy had felt nervous. Was this some sort of ambush? He picked out the swimmer with his torch and shouted, “Make yourself known.” The swimmer stopped and trod water while she explained that she had escaped from the train. Having checked that she was unarmed and free of explosives, Pat and Smithy escorted her back to Leicester Square and returned a few minutes later smiling about some private joke. Andy envied them their nonchalance. The flooded tunnel had him spooked.

  But just when it looked as though the water would reach the top of the tunnel and they would be forced to use their newly supplied breathing apparatus, there was a huge explosion that sent waves slapping against the tunnel walls. Almost immediately, the water level began to drop and the radio crackled into life as Andy’s operations officer gave them the green light to go in.

  As they made their way toward the train in the inflatable, he felt that buzz of excitement and adrenalin that he always had when a mission was under way. The water was still high enough to force them to duck to avoid cracking their heads against the top of the tunnel. The scream of the outboard engine was almost deafening in the enclosed space but it was the thought of the explosives that bothered Andy the most. All he could hope was that, by now, all the pieces of detonation equipment would have been given a good soaking and might not be in the best shape to do their job.

  Pat sat in the prow and shone a portable arc light to try and dazzle anyone intending to shoot at them. As he had expected, the shots started when they were about a hundred feet out from the train. There were a series of muzzle flashes from a handgun. Bullets ricocheted around the tunnel and one of them struck the arc light making it shatter in Pat’s hands scattering debris throughout the boat.