by Chris Ryan
The Chief Commissioner looked thoughtful. ‘General Chambers, once we’ve rescued the immediate casualties we’re going to need to think about evacuating the civilian population.’
The General considered this for a moment, then turned to speak to a woman manning a workstation behind him. ‘Lieutenant,’ he ordered, bending down to speak to her. ‘I want you to concentrate on getting hold of the Prime Minister.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Chapter Seventeen
Ben was warmer now, and at least the Burberry stopped him getting any wetter. To his right he saw the water covering the road like a black slick; beyond the buildings the swollen river spread out like a loch.
Above him he could hear a new sound through the beat of the rain. A thrumming, like a helicopter but at the same time not quite like one.
A dark shape was moving across above the river. Red lights winked on its underside and Ben saw short helicopter rotors whirling round at each end. A Chinook. The rescue effort must be starting.
It paused over the water, framed for a moment by the gap between the buildings, then began to descend. Ben dashed across the road and waved, but the Chinook was aiming for the roof of a low building surrounded by water, where a group of people were stranded like penguins on an iceberg. It stopped and hovered about ten metres above the roof, its side door open. Ben could see people moving inside; then a winchman on a harness dropped out of the doorway and swung down to the figures on the roof.
He heard another double-beat of helicopter blades. A second Chinook went over, heading west, upriver. It was like being in a war movie, Ben thought.
And he was still on his own.
He stopped to turn the page of the A–Z. The pages were wet, stuck together like tissue paper. He peeled them apart carefully, worried about tearing them. The printing from the other side of the page was showing through anyway, making it hopelessly confusing. On the opposite side of the road was a high wall with metal spikes along the top. If he remembered correctly that was the grounds of Buckingham Palace. He put the A–Z back in his pocket, decided to keep the wall to his right and started walking again.
Standing still even for that short time had made him shivery, so he hurried along, trying to warm up again. Suddenly, as he looked more closely along a side street, he saw rats scuttling along, away from the water. He shivered. He also noticed manhole covers littering the street and Ben wondered why. They must have been lifted by the pressure of the water as it rose up out of the drains. That made him wish his dad was with him because they would have chatted about it.
Ben’s thoughts returned to Bel. If she could have been a normal mother and stayed at home, Ben wouldn’t be here right now. But she wanted to be mother to the entire planet’s ecosystem, nagging everyone to take better care of it and telling them they’d regret it if they didn’t. Now Ben was trudging through these wet streets with no money and no way of getting in touch with anybody. It was as if her long years of doom-mongering had conjured up the whole disaster. She’d said everyone would suffer and now they were doing just that. He hoped she was out there in the rain too, getting the full benefit. She certainly deserved to be.
* * *
The winch operator on the Chinook slowly wound the sling back up. In the harness on the end, the winchman was a soldier, his head encased in a green helmet like a cannonball with his surname painted on the back. He was carrying an exhausted woman, his arms and legs supporting her so that she didn’t slip. The sling swung in the air currents set up by the rotors, and khaki-sleeved arms reached down to pull it in.
As soon as the woman was safely clear of the door, two medics knelt down to examine her. Above the whine of the engines they couldn’t speak, but they didn’t need to. Her blue lips and delayed response to her surroundings were classic signs of hypothermia. One medic spread a khaki blanket over her while another took her pulse.
While they worked on her, a row of people who had been rescued watched as they sat huddled in foil survival blankets against the bare metal ribs of the fuselage. The craft was huge and was carrying about fifty casualties; some of them on canvas stretchers, others clutching warm drinks. Another medic kept an eye on them, taking their pulses, tending to injuries.
The inside of the Chinook smelled of dirty water and worse: sewage. London’s sewers had disgorged their contents into the streets. It wasn’t good news: stopping infection and disease was going to be a big problem over the days to come.
At the door, the winch operator and the winchman were checking their equipment, ready to make another journey, but then the co-pilot tapped the winchman on the shoulder and gave a throat-cutting gesture with his hand. No more rescues. They were full. He gave another hand signal: close the doors. The winch operator nodded and went to secure the sling. As his partner closed the doors, he could see more people down below, waving out of windows, standing on roofs. There was a couple stuck on the roof of their car, the vehicle a tiny red island in a lake of filthy water. As the Chinook gained height, the figures who still needed help dwindled to specks.
As they left the flooded area, London began to look more normal again. But they saw that every street was packed with cars, a daisy chain of brake lights as people tried to escape the city. Some of them had their possessions tied to their roofs, like giant snails. They might as well have been snails for all the progress they were making. The wet air was grey with smog from their chugging engines.
The winchman was looking out of the other window with binoculars. He turned to hand them to his partner and pointed out of the window.
Beside the stationary line of traffic was a grey-brown, moving mass. At first it looked like running water, but it seemed to be grainy, as though it was composed of many small pieces.
He focused the binoculars and realized what it was. Rats. They must have come out of the sewers. They were swarming past the stationary cars.
That seemed to sum up the day. When the rats decided to leave London, there really was no going back.
Chapter Eighteen
The undercarriage of the Flying Eye touched down at last in Stapleford Aerodrome in Essex. As Mike slowed the plane to taxi speed, he and Meena both felt they’d come to the end of a long journey. They were lucky the airfield was still there; quite a lot of the surrounding countryside was underwater and the nearby river Lee had burst its banks. But everything at the airfield looked normal: the control tower, the hangars, the sprinkling of cars in the car park.
Meena unbuckled her seatbelt and looked through her pictures.
‘Did they come out?’ said Mike. ‘You owe me a drink for those.’
Meena grinned at him. ‘When I collect my Press Association award, you can be my guest at the ceremony.’ She heard a crackle coming from her headphones on the dashboard. ‘Hey, Capital’s transmitting again.’ She lifted the cups to her ears, then frowned and routed the radio through the plane’s speakers. ‘Listen to this.’
It was a strange serious-sounding voice, like a BBC news reader’s. ‘… important to turn off gas and electricity, if it is safe to do so. If you are stranded in a building and your exit is flooded, you can alert the rescue parties by hanging a sheet or large piece of cloth out of the window. Do not go out unless it is absolutely necessary.’
‘That’s not Capital,’ said Mike.
Meena checked the tuning. ‘It’s on the Capital frequency.’
‘Do not try to wade through the water or swim as the current is dangerous. Even twenty centimetres of water can knock you off your feet. Do not try to improvize boats with paddling pools or other items, or use recreational swimming toys such as lilos or air beds. You are much safer staying where you are and waiting for the rescue services to come to you.’
‘Where did they get him?’ said Mike. ‘He sounds like he came out of a time warp.’
Meena tried twiddling the dial. ‘LBC’s out. Oh – Radio One’s on. But it’s playing the same thing.’
‘The emergency services must have taken over the
transmitters.’
‘How do they do that, then? The Capital offices were abandoned.’
‘They’ve probably got a way to cover a range of frequencies. Or something. I don’t know. I’m only a pilot.’
‘If you are in a building whose lower floors are flooded, try to dress warmly: if your building is flooded, the water will cool it down. Try to find loose-fitting, comfortable garments and good walking shoes. If you need medicines, make sure they are close at hand. You can make sandbags to stop water coming in under doors, using pillows or cushions or heavy material such as blankets.’
Mike brought the plane to a halt, went through the power-down procedure and opened the door.
Meena remained sitting in the seat, her eyes fixed on the pictures on her camera.
‘What’s up? Did you leave the lens cap on?’
‘I’ll be OK in a minute.’
For the first time Meena began to realize what she had just seen. London was wrecked. She’d grown up there, built a career there. She didn’t live there now, but so many people she knew did. Many of her favourite places were there: shops, theatres, cafés, restaurants, museums. The landmarks of London were the landmarks of her life. With a heavy heart she climbed down from the plane.
‘Miss?’
A man in army fatigues was walking out of the hangar. He had a green helmet under his arm with the name DOREK handpainted on it in white letters, and seemed to be looking straight at her.
‘Yes?’
‘Are those pictures of the disaster area?’ His accent was Polish.
‘Yes, they are.’
‘The emergency services would be very interested in them. We need to make a map of the disaster area and any information at all is being considered of value at present.’
She sighed and held her camera up. ‘You’re welcome to them, if you can find a printer.’
There was not a helicopter in sight at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton. The rain fell on a mass of empty tarmac. Junior communications officer Lieutenant William Beaumont had never seen it empty like that. Every single heli was out on a mission. And that meant the communications room was stretched to the limit.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Beaumont to his captain, ‘we don’t have enough bandwidth to send that message at present.’
The captain needed to get his message to General Chambers in Hendon. ‘Just find a way to send it, Lieutenant, it’s top priority.’
‘With respect, sir,’ said Beaumont, ‘all the satellites are fully in use.’ He indicated his workstation, where he was tracking all the helicopters that had been dispatched to deal with the emergency.
The captain clearly didn’t believe him. He sighed, then bent down and hit a couple of keys on Beaumont’s workstation. The display changed. The lieutenant was annoyed but there was nothing he could do about it: the captain was his superior.
The captain’s finger stabbed the screen. ‘There. That channel’s free. Send it on that.’
‘You can’t use that channel, sir,’ said Beaumont. ‘It has to be kept clear for vital defence communications.’
‘This is a vital communication, Lieutenant. Now just send it. That’s an order.’
In the cold rolling waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a black shape emerged. It looked like a shark’s fin, but much bigger. A radio antenna rose slowly out of the top, in a tube camouflaged with white and black so that it blended into the sea and sky around it.
The object was speeding through the water, the waves closing over it as it went. When the waves rolled away, a little more became visible – the top of something much bigger, long and dark: a hundred and fifty metres long – longer than a football pitch. It was HMS Vanquish, a Vanguard-class nuclear submarine.
The captain stood on the bridge, or conn, hands on hips, bathed in red light. It was dark and cramped there and it smelled of oil and sweat. The walls of instruments twinkled with coloured lights and glowing screens. It was also noisy with radio static, the steady bleep of the sonar and the thrum of the propeller that drove the craft through the water.
The helmsman was watching a readout of the sub’s depth. ‘We’re on the surface now, sir.’
‘Antenna is deployed and active,’ said the communications officer.
The submarine had several systems of communication. There was the VLF antenna by the conning tower. VLF stood for Very Low Frequency, the only type of radio signals that could penetrate water. This was how the sub kept in contact with its commanders in the UK. Because the frequency was so low, it could not carry audio signals like voices, so most orders and routine transmissions from the UK were sent as encrypted text. Then there was a buoyant wire antenna – an aerial several hundred metres long that floated up on a cable like a tail and allowed the sub to pick up transmissions without surfacing. And, for use in special circumstances, there was an erectable mast in the top fin. To use this mast, the sub had to be able to surface.
At the moment the Vanquish was testing all three systems. Every four hours it received a standard message from its commanders in the Admiralty; an all-clear to let them know that all was well in the UK. The transmission was top priority and was never missed.
But the last one had failed to come through.
‘Commence testing,’ said the captain.
‘Testing now, sir.’
The communications officer sent a test signal and monitored the three receivers for the results. They were all fine. He turned round. ‘Sir, all communications equipment is fully operational. There is no reason why we should have missed the transmission.’
‘Thank you, Officer.’ The captain unhooked a microphone attached to his command post by a curly cable and spoke into it. ‘Computer room, this is the captain. Are there any malfunctions on the communications equipment?’
‘No malfunctions, sir. All systems are working correctly.’
The captain slipped the microphone back to his command station. He was aware that the eyes of all the crew members were on him.
‘Communications Officer, is there anything else we can do to re-establish communication?’
‘No, sir. But sir – I’m picking up radio broadcasts saying London is submerged. There may have been some kind of natural disaster there.’
The captain thought. ‘Gentlemen, we have our protocols and we must follow them. We have strict instructions on what to do if our all-clear transmission is missed. That is so that if there is an emergency, High Command know exactly what we will do. We will have to risk exposing our position by sending a signal to High Command. Communications Officer, send the emergency message.’
The communications officer was ready. He rapidly typed the message into his keyboard and watched the thermometer bar on the screen as it was fired off into the ether. ‘Message successfully sent, sir.’
The message sent, they could submerge once more. ‘Dive to three hundred metres. Full speed ahead.’
‘Aye-aye, Captain.’
They all felt the pressure in their ears as the ship began to submerge. There was another feeling too: a deep shudder as the propeller bit into the sea. With a Chinagraph pencil the navigator made notes about their course on a Perspex map.
The captain unhooked the intercom again and spoke to the ship. ‘This is the captain. Our routine all-clear transmission from High Command has been missed and we have had to break cover by contacting them. This has exposed our presence in these waters. We are now in a vulnerable position as we could be targeted by enemy action. We do not know the reason why High Command has missed the routine all-clear transmission. Until we contact them, this boat is in a state of emergency. Everyone will work double shifts and all privileges are cancelled.’
Lieutenant Roberts was coming off duty in the computer room and intending to grab a bite to eat in the mess. Now he hurried down faster than usual. Privileges cancelled meant no watching movies or time off. What on earth was going on?
The cramped mess was crowded when he got there. Midshipmen, oilers and officers were
all trying to grab a quick bite before going straight back on duty.
Roberts grabbed some rather grey-looking stew and a couple of rolls and sat down opposite Andrews, a missiles engineer, who was trying to shovel soup and a sandwich into his mouth as fast as humanly possible. They were also discussing the captain’s announcement.
‘What do you think’s happened in England?’ said Roberts. ‘Why didn’t we get our all-clear?’
Andrews stuffed the last of his corned-beef sandwich into his mouth and stole some of Roberts’s bread roll. ‘I bet some idiot in the Admiralty has used the secure frequency to phone their girlfriend, or some other SNAFU. But this could be serious. We don’t know what’s happened up there. The next eight hours or so will be critical. If we can’t contact Whitehall we could even end up launching missiles. After all, that’s what we’re here for. We’re carrying four nukes.’
Nukes; nuclear warheads. HMS Vanquish had the capacity to carry sixteen Trident II D-5 missiles, which could each carry twelve warheads …
Chapter Nineteen
In Hendon, General Thomas Chambers had been on the satellite link with Chequers. He had some information about the Prime Minister, but it wasn’t helpful. He wasn’t in a top-secret meeting. He had taken off from Chequers that morning in a helicopter. Now General Chambers was waiting for staff at Chequers to get back to him with the flight plan.
Right now, they were having another conversation he’d hoped to avoid. The chief commissioner was trying to persuade the politicians and civil servants in the bunker at Whitehall to give the go-ahead to evacuate the city.
The Foreign Secretary and the two grey-haired civil servants had been joined by a fat man in a pinstripe suit, who General Chambers recognized as a back-bench MP.
‘If we evacuate London,’ said Fat Pinstripe, ‘it could wipe billions off the stock market. It’s just unnecessary.’