Taking the Tunnel

by James Adams

  Behind Harry Ritchie, Dai Choi and his team were already at work. They had only a few minutes before the train would halt. Leung took charge of the VW and his team lifted out floor mats, ceiling lining and door seals. Dai Choi did the same in the Granada and within seconds there was a pile of Demex explosives sitting in the boot of the Ford.

  The second VW battery was out on the floor. A large screwdriver levered off the plastic lid, the water was poured out and then the three lead plates were lifted out. Exposed, the detonators were the size and colour of a thin thimble made of a metal that looked like foil. At one end of the tube, two small copper wires protruded.

  In the back of the Ford, one man was cutting the sheets of explosive with a Stanley knife into rectangles six inches by twelve. At the top of each sheet he pushed a screwdriver through to make a small, round hole. On some, he left a small strip at either end so that the rectangle sat on small legs. He then handed them to a second man who attached strips of double sided adhesive tape to them. A third man opened a box of three-mm ball bearings and poured them on to the sticky surface, pushing them down to make sure they had a firm grip.

  As each strip was finished, it was carried to the back of the Volkswagen where the detonators now lay next to a small pile of what looked like tiny red plastic top hats, which were in fact holders for the detonators. A small incision in the tape and then a top hat was pushed into each sheet, followed by the detonator.

  In the second carriage, the five men in the van had moved into the rear compartment and lifted off the lids to the lead containers. The racks of film and computer tape were discarded to reveal the lead bottom of the chest. A screwdriver scraped along the edge of the bottom revealed a thin layer of plastic sealer which peeled away in strips. When the bottom plate was levered up the armoury was revealed.

  The priority now was bomb timers and small arms. The back of the vehicle filled with the slap of flesh on metal, the snicking of safety catches and the slithering sound produced as the magazine slides into the butt of an automatic pistol. With fifteen seconds to go, they were ready.

  *

  Harry Ritchie had watched the miles tick off on the screen to his right. He had watched each second pass on the digital clock. There was no time now to get out, no opportunity to think again. He was committed.

  Suddenly his hand reached out and slapped down on the red emergency button to his left. Instantly the alternating cadence of an alarm bell went off in the cab and the train began to slow down. Even though he was expecting the jolt, Harry was jerked forward in his seat. Each second seemed to elongate into distinct fractions of time as his mind recorded the moments of his betrayal.

  Two beads of sweat flew from his forehead, propelled by the sudden jolt, arced through the air and splattered on the screen in front of him, the tiny droplets obscuring his view of the lights ahead. The Tunnel was no longer a blur but had taken on a clear shape as the train slowed down. The lights were distinct now, the joins between the individual concrete blocks lining the wall and roof quite apparent. Then, suddenly, smoothly, the train stopped.

  Harry knew that back in Cheriton and at the Coquelles terminal outside Calais the alarm bells would be ringing, or rather the lights on the display boards which show the exact position of every train would be flashing red. The computer system had been designed to deal with any crisis that involved a train breaking down in the Tunnel. Trains travel so close together that there is no time to warn other drivers on the telephone that they all have in their cabs. Instead, the crisis management computer programme overrides all other systems automatically. A signal sent from the British side stops all the trains heading south and an identical message from Coquelles stops the trains heading for England.

  Even while the other trains were slowing down, the telephone in Harry’s cab began to purr.

  “Ritchie? This is Control. What the hell’s going on out there?”

  But before Harry had a chance to reply, he heard the sharp crack of explosions and could see in his mirrors bright red flashes illuminating the Tunnel walls.

  “Christ Almighty,” he exclaimed. The bastards are blowing up the Tunnel.”

  As soon as the train began to slow down, Dai Choi’s men began to fan out into the carriage, pushing their way through the other passengers who were milling around their vehicles. Each man carried a rifle or machine-gun and had an automatic pistol stuffed into the waistband of his trousers or into a side pocket. There were no military uniforms, just the standard dress of jeans, shirts, gym shoes, the occasional leather jacket and a couple of suits. The very innocence of the clothing combined with the deadly nature of their equipment stunned the other passengers. For thirty seconds there was no move to do anything, not even a question broke the silence.

  By then it was too late. As the train halted, a man in each carriage pressed the red emergency release to open the centre doors which immediately slid back on their greased runners. In front was the grey curving wall of the tunnel.

  Michael Leung leaped the four feet from the carriage to the ground, his feet crunching on the pebbles that lined the floor of the Tunnel. Looking to his left he saw the tiny form of Kang Sheng follow. They ran towards each other, meeting at the junction of the two carriages. Kang Sheng passed a single El08 incendiary grenade to Leung and wordlessly they ran back past where they had started. Leung was winded by the time he stopped, the exertion and the tension making it difficult for him to breathe.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out some grey plumber’s tape and, bending over, began to move crablike along the wall of the Tunnel.

  When the Tunnel had originally been designed, the most serious concern was neither flooding nor terrorism but fire. Eurotunnel knew that unless they had an effective safety system, they would be unable to overcome the public’s natural reservations about going underwater in a train for such a long time. The system they came up with was simple but efficient.

  On both sides of the Tunnel wall, tiny heat sensors were fixed so that if a fire broke out in any part of the train it would be instantly detected. Once the heat source was picked up, the sensor would activate, sending a message to the control centre. A display board gives the location of every sensor and so the location of the fire can be instantly identified.

  There are a number of defences, beginning with the humble fire extinguisher in every carriage, through reservoirs of water and fire hoses, to Halon gas which can be pumped into the carriages to smother the flames.

  In theory, all passengers should have time to evacuate to neighbouring rail cars before the final safety system activates. Having detected the source of the fire, the computers automatically uncouple the carriages on either side of the fire and the engines at either end pull the other carriages to the exit, leaving the burning carriages behind.

  Kang Sheng found the heat detector, which looked like a small black mine with a perforated lid. Using his tape he bound the grenade to the pipe containing the electrical cables, put his forefinger through the small ring protruding from the side of the grenade and pulled.

  The Haley and Weller El08 incendiary grenade is designed for sabotage. It is also often used for agents on a dangerous assignment who might have to destroy documents in a hurry. It is 114 mm long, 50 mm in diameter and weighs just 550 grams. Within a second and a half of Kang Sheng pulling the pin, there was a loud explosion as the bottom of the grenade was blown out and the powder in the body of the grenade was exposed to the air.

  Immediately, an intense white light forced Kang Sheng to look away. He shielded his eyes from the reflection off the metal of the train. In an instant, the grenade was burning at 2,700 degrees centigrade. The moment before the heat detector melted, it sent the fire signal back to Cheriton. Looking behind him, Kang Sheng saw the reflected glow as Leung set off his charges. In fact, two signals were received at the same time.

  The computer was designed to respond to different messages with a graduated response to a crisis. On this occasion, all the steps were avoided as th
e fail-safe system leaped up the ladder of response with one mighty bound. Before the operators even had time to assess the seriousness of the situation, the computer had sent instructions to the coupling units at the ends of the two carriages containing the White Lotus attackers. There were two soft clunks as the metal clips parted. There were now two trains and, simultaneously, they restarted their journey, one heading north, the other south, both heading for daylight.

  Until they had boarded the train Kate Carr thought the adventure was going exactly as planned. The journey to the train had been easy enough and, much to her relief, there had been minimum delays at Customs. In fact, they had plenty of time to stop off and buy some puzzle books for Emma inside the shopping complex.

  They had been directed to carriage A8 and found they were the first to board. A crewman directed them to the front and they parked facing the steel shutters that were designed to isolate one carriage from the next in the event of fire. Just to the right of the shutters, two small glass doors allowed access to the next carriage so that passengers could evacuate in an emergency or simply walk through to the buffet car just behind the front engine.

  Kate got out of the car to stretch her legs. She looked to her left and saw one of those electronic machines that scroll words across a rectangular screen in a series of illuminated red dots.

  “THE SHUTTLE WILL LEAVE FOR FRANCE IN ONE MINUTE”, she read, “YOU MAY LEAVE YOUR CAR. COFFEE, TEA AND A HOT BREAKFAST WILL BE SERVED IN THE BUFFET CAR AT THE FRONT OF THE TRAIN.”

  “Do you think we should take Emma for some food?” Tom had asked.

  “It’s hardly worth the trouble. We’ll be at the other side by the time the coffee is cool enough to drink,” she replied.

  Kate looked around with the unfocused gaze all passengers use to eye each other. Her eyes took in and then dismissed the car behind hers with the four Chinese men in suits. Then the train began to move and she noticed them get out of their car.

  “Mummy, what’s the answer to “A bug that thinks it is a plane” in three letters?” Emma asked, her mind engrossed in the puzzle book they had bought at the gift shop.

  “Fly,” Kate answered distractedly, her mind already moving with the train, imagining the convoy moving towards the sea and then under it. Already they were probably underwater. She felt a shiver run down her spine. This is ridiculous, she reassured herself. Thousands have gone before me and thousands will come after me. There’s no reason at all that God will choose my train to collapse the Tunnel on.

  She felt a tugging on her hand and looked down to see Emma looking up and pointing with her other hand, the book discarded beside her.

  “Look, Mummy. What are those men doing?”

  Kate looked behind her and saw that the Chinese men appeared to be tearing their car apart. They were taking great strips of material out of the car roof, lifting out the car mats and even peeling stuff from around the windows and doors and carrying it to the open boot. How extraordinary, she thought. What on earth can they be doing?

  She watched for a moment longer and then leaned down and spoke through the passenger door to Tom who was still in the driver’s seat.

  Tom, look at those Chinese people behind us. They seem to be taking their car apart.”

  As Tom turned to look, Kate felt the train begin to slow down and her pulse raced as all her unspoken fears rushed to the surface. She looked around, seeking reassurance or an explanation to calm her. She saw that the Chinese were now at the entrance door to the carriage. They looked expectant, she thought. They were poised for something, but what?

  The digital noticeboard began scrolling a new message. “EMERGENCY, PLEASE STAY WITH YOUR CAR”, she read, the words chattering across the screen with agonizing slowness, her mind racing ahead, trying to anticipate the next words.

  Then the train stopped and the action accelerated. The centre doors opened with a hiss and she saw one of the Chinese men jump down to the track. The others turned their backs to the door and faced into the carriage. Their stance seemed an open challenge to the passengers to confront them but nobody did. Everybody seemed stunned, the other passengers’ faces reflecting a mixture of fear and curiosity. As yet there was no understanding.

  There was a sudden explosion and the carriage was filled with a vicious white light. Kate turned her eyes away from the doorway but still the brightness reflected from the metal walls around her to blind her.

  Suddenly the light disappeared. The contrast was so great that for a moment Kate could see nothing. A siren pierced the silence, a high-pitched warbling tone that echoed and re-echoed along the carriage walls. Emma began to cry and Kate felt her heart grow tight in her chest. In a moment of absolute clarity she noticed with astonishment that she could actually feel her heart pumping the blood around her body.

  She glanced again at the message screen and knew that she was about to die. “EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, PLEASE EVACUATE YOUR CARRIAGE. WALK FORWARD TO THE NEXT CAR. EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY.”

  She had hardly digested the instructions when a voice on the loudspeaker system began to intone the same orders.

  Kate turned back to the car and opened the rear door, reached in and pulled Emma out. “Hurry, darling. Hurry. Go through those doors there. Hurry.”

  As she spoke, she looked up at the small doorway leading to the next carriage. A man, one of the dark-suited Chinese from the car behind, was standing there. He was holding a small, stubby gun with a long magazine across his chest. He did not speak, but somehow she knew that there was to be no escape.

  Kate felt her legs give way beneath her and she put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder to prevent herself falling to the metal floor of the carriage.

  “No. It’s not a fire, you fucking halfwit. It’s a hijack.” Harry was shouting into the phone now, all thoughts of his family lost in the anger and the desperate effort to explain. “There are terrorists aboard. We’re being hijacked. Bring the whole train out.”

  After his earlier betrayal, duty to family and employer had once again coincided. He knew the only chance for him and his family was to bring the train out intact and to capture the men who were sabotaging the Tunnel behind him. But the voice at the other end of the phone seemed so vacant, so slow.

  “Harry, the computer tells us there’s a huge fire down there. We’ve dispatched emergency crews and we’ll have you out in a couple of minutes.”

  “No. Wait.”

  But it was too late! There was a brief trembling through the soles of his feet and he knew that all the procedures had worked perfectly and he was on his way to France.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Brigadier John Cassidy was idly flicking through the latest pile of bumph passed upstairs from the planners on the third floor. The traffic was endless, the options for different scenarios practically infinite. As Commander of the Joint Operations Centre, it was his job to read ail the gee-whiz ideas from downstairs and train his guys so that when the shit hit the proverbial his arse would be covered. Even more important, so would the fatter arse of the guy downstairs who wrote the paper in the first place.

  A tall, spare man with thin cheeks and a long neck, he appeared permanently coiled with tension that demanded action. In fact he was a calm man, cool in a crisis, with the logical brain much prized by military commanders who want their leaders to think before they act. He was almost completely bald, a handicap he had suffered since his early twenties. His shiny pate tended to go a deep red under stress. One night as a lowly lieutenant in the officers’ mess at the Regimental Headquarters in Albany Street overlooking Regent’s Park, he had been about to defeat the Regimental snooker champion of many years’ standing. The senior officer’s friends resented the potent play of the newcomer, sneaked up behind him, lifted him by his legs and used his red, bald head to hit the white ball. Not surprisingly, it was a miscue and the game was lost. It was an early lesson to Cassidy not to get above himself. But the result was the nickname of Cue, shortened to Q, which had stayed with him through his Army
career.

  He had commanded the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars in the Gulf when the British tanks had fought alongside the American 7th Armoured Division to liberate Kuwait. It had been his regiment’s finest hour since the battle of Imjin in the Korean war. Like other veterans of the Gulf, Cassidy had been able to survive the post-Cold-War defence cuts.

  With a grunt of disgust he dumped a ten-page offering entitled “Special Forces — Managing or Creating a Crisis?” into his out tray and turned to his computer terminal. The white telephone to his left let out its distinctive warble.

  There was a time when the ringing of this telephone, used only for scrambled calls, would have given his heart a quick flip, but after a year in the JOC, such calls had become routine.

  “Q. Nick.” He did not even have time to respond as he recognized the voice of Nick Rufford, a captain with the Special Forces Headquarters in the Duke of York’s barracks in Knightsbridge.

  “We’ve had a call from one of our lads. Ex-Hereford, now with Tunnel security. He says they’ve got some trouble down there. It looks like a terrorist attack. I’ve got my guys going and I suggest you do the same.”

  The low-pitched buzz indicating that the scrambler was working disappeared as the phone was hung up.

  John reflected that as usual the informal intelligence net had worked far more efficiently than the regular channels which were supposed to give him early warning of any crisis. He turned to his OpCon computer system, inserted the identity card which cleared him to read the most sensitive traffic classified Cosmic Top Secret and scrolled through the message board. Nothing. As per fucking usual, he thought.