by Tom Barber
THIRTEEN
The black ARU Ford carrying Porter, Mac, Archer and Chalky weaved in and out of traffic as it sped towards the stadium. Outside the window, hordes of fans were streaming along the pavement, fleeing the scene. They all looked traumatised, children crying, adults beside them wide-eyed with shock and fear as they raced away from the stadium.
Behind the wheel Porter skilfully manoeuvred through the streets, the flashing front and rear fender lights on the vehicle helping him forge a path through the traffic. The three officers beside him were each adjusting a throat microphone that they would use to communicate on the ground. With a small mic strapped around the neck, an earpiece tucked into their ear, they could talk to each other by pushing a pressel switch clipped to the front of the tactical vest.
Swerving to avoid two Tottenham fans running across the road, Porter listened to an earpiece in his ear. Instead of his throat mic, he had a hands-free connected to his mobile phone.
He turned to the men beside him.
‘Nikki found him on the cameras outside the entrance gates,’ he said. ‘It was Number Five.’
Mac hit the dashboard in front of him violently. ‘Shit!’
‘Estimated dead?’ Archer asked, as he finished adjusting the strap on his mic.
Porter turned a hard left, listening as Nikki spoke into his ear from the other end of the call.
‘A hundred and fifty. Same again wounded.’
Archer stared at him.
The London Underground and bus bombings of 2005 had killed just over fifty people. That was a horrific disaster, one that would go down in history as one of the darkest days in the nation’s history.
The casualties here were three times that.
Outside, the streets and pavements were getting clogged with more and more fans fleeing the football ground. They were getting close.
As he finished fixing his gear, Archer suddenly noticed that Chalky was unusually quiet. He hadn’t said a word the entire trip.
Turning, he saw that his friend looked pale. And he noticed something else.
‘Hey.’
Chalky looked at him.
Archer pointed to the MP5 sub-machine gun resting on his friend’s lap.
‘You left the safety off,’ Archer told him.
Chalky glanced down. His friend was right. The weapon was set to Fire, a round in the chamber as it lay on his lap.
The angle it was resting meant the barrel was aimed straight at Archer’s ribcage.
If it had gone off, he’d have been killed instantly.
‘Oh. Thanks,’ Chalky muttered, correcting his mistake and clicking on the safety catch.
Archer gave him a look, swallowing down his anger as Porter stopped the car and pulled on the handbrake.
Without a word, the four police officers stepped out of the Ford.
And the quiet of the car was instantly replaced by a cacophony of sirens, screaming and shouting.
They each slammed their doors and came to stand in a line, facing the car park. The four of them were momentarily rooted to the spot as they surveyed the scene before them for the first time.
‘Jesus,’ Archer muttered.
It was complete pandemonium.
Outside the big stadium there were fans everywhere, fleeing like ants from a nest as they streamed from every exit. Ambulances were scattered all over the car park, their paramedics working frantically amongst the wounded, a number that was growing by the minute. Those able to walk helped carry those who couldn’t as they staggered towards safety; the scene resembled something out of a war movie.
Archer could see many of them were wearing Arsenal and Tottenham shirts singed and spattered with blood.
And above it all, a chorus of screaming and shouting filled the cold air, making the hairs on his neck stand up.
Behind the four officers the other two cars from the Unit pulled up to an abrupt halt beside the other parked Ford. The doors opened and the remaining six officers ran over, led by Deakins and Fox. Each man was fully-equipped with both the throat mic and MP5 sub-machine gun; they gathered in a semi-circle around Mac, waiting for instructions.
He turned to face them
‘Listen up!’ he ordered. He turned to Fox. ‘Foxy, take Spitz and Mace. Go and check the other stands. Look everywhere. Rubbish bins, dressing rooms, offices, toilets, I don't care. This could only be half the job.’
Fox nodded, without a word.
He turned and ran towards the stadium with Spitz and Mason beside him, dodging those rushing in the opposite direction.
Mac turned to the remaining six men before him.
‘The rest of you, stay out here,’ he ordered. ‘Move through the crowd. Help the medics and the other coppers. Gather the wounded, try to maintain calm and keep your eyes open for anything suspicious. Stay on the radio and stay mobile. Move!’
The men nodded and turned instantly, dispersing swiftly into the traumatised crowd.
Across the stadium car park, a young doctor called Hannah Gibbs was working flat out. When she’d seen her name down for the New Year’s Eve shift three days ago at St Mary’s Hospital, she knew she was in for a long night. Most people who celebrated the New Year were just out to have a good time; they had some drinks, had some fun and partied away until the early hours. But then again wherever there’s alcohol, trouble soon follows, and the shift was renowned as an especially hectic and busy one with all the drunken injured stumbling in.
Two years shy of thirty, Gibbs had finished her degree in medicine at Nottingham University some four years ago, then moved south and taken up a post at St Mary’s. Although she’d been there for less than four years, she thought she’d seen pretty much everything. Gunshot wounds. Stabbings.
But as she pushed the wheeled stretcher and looked at the crowd around her, she realised this was beyond anything she could have ever imagined.
She was in the middle of the car park, trying to make her way through the mass of wounded and emergency services who were using the tarmac as a sort of makeshift triage. She was attempting to push a gurney holding a female Arsenal fan she’d been treating who’d been close to the blast.
The woman was in a bad way; she’d been standing just ahead of the explosion, about seventy feet away with her back turned. It was a miracle that she was still alive. Her Arsenal shirt was torn, singed and covered with blood, her back riddled with nails and chippings of glass, some of it lodged in her vertebrae and spine. She was in such a critical condition that every second counted. A moment’s delay, or hesitation, and she’d die in the ambulance or on the operating table. The clock was ticking, and Gibbs had to get her out of here immediately if she had any chance of making it.
Looking ahead, she saw an ambulance with its rear doors open, a slot available. Gibbs rushed forward as fast as she could, praying that someone wouldn’t get there first and steal the spot. She made it. A paramedic was inside the vehicle, clearing space, he’d seen her coming.
Gibbs had already hooked the injured woman’s vein up to an IV which she passed up to him carefully.
‘This one?’ he asked, hurriedly, looking at the injured woman lying on the gurney.
‘Severe head and back trauma,’ said Gibbs.’ Multiple injuries. Nails, shards of glass in her neck and spine. She needs to get to theatre asap.’
He nodded as another man appeared from the side of the ambulance. The driver. He ran to the other end of the bed and together, the two men lifted it and pushed it into the ambulance, locking it in place.
The woman lying on the gurney didn’t make a sound; Gibbs saw she’d passed out.
The driver slammed one of the doors, he reached for the other one, but Gibbs suddenly spotted something and grabbed his arm.
‘Wait!’ she told him. ‘Hey!’
She called to four wounded fans, who were slumped together on the kerb ten feet from the ambulance. They turned to look at her in unison, like four owls in a tree, dazed and wide-eyed with shock. Gibbs waved her arm fra
ntically, beckoning them to come forward.
Climbing up and helping each other, they shuffled over.
‘Get in,’ Gibbs ordered, helping them one by one up into the back of the vehicle. When that was done, she turned back to the driver. ‘We need to get as many of them out of here as fast as we can.’
The driver nodded and ran to the front door, climbing in behind the wheel. In the back, it was a tight squeeze, the group including the other paramedic gathered around the injured woman on the bed, but they’d all made it inside. Gibbs decided to jump in as well; she wanted to try and keep the woman alive until they could get her to hospital.
As she took a seat and reached forward to shut the door, she saw a news reporter hurrying into position on the tarmac close by. Amidst all the wounded and blood-stained medical help, she looked absurdly neat and polished, like a model who’d just stepped off the runway. The engine roared into life as the driver fired the ignition, jerking Gibbs back to the present.
She pulled the door shut.
With the siren blaring, the ambulance pulled out of the car park and sped off towards the hospital.
Outside the bar in the shopping centre in Angel, it was also time to leave.
The man standing beside the two black bags was still watching the screens inside. The volume was muted, so he couldn’t hear the report, but he didn’t need to. A picture tells a thousand words. The screen was showing all the wounded outside the stadium, smoke billowing from the South stand, people outside screaming and crying. It looked as if the whole place was packed with ambulance teams, paramedics and the injured.
Showtime.
Placing his glass down on a nearby table, he turned and walked away from the bar quickly.
No one was standing near him, so nobody noticed his departure.
Every person inside the pub was staring at the televisions, some covering their mouths with horror, all of them rooted to the spot as they watched the horrifying scenes unfold. The stadium was only a few miles from the bar; if they stepped outside they could probably hear the screaming in the distance.
Behind them all, outside the entrance, the two thickly packed holdalls rested against each other on the ground.
As he walked towards the exit, the man glanced back at the bags and smiled to himself.
Nobody would notice they were there.
Not yet.
