by Tom Barber
*
Not long after, the black Ford carrying the four ARU officers screeched to a halt on Parkfield Street outside the N1 shopping centre. Mac and his three men piled out of the car, slamming the doors and running to the entrance.
Around them, people were being evacuated by security but Archer knew they weren’t getting out fast enough as he raced towards the mall. The building was an open design, two levels, but with a courtyard serving as the central hub and no glass windows or any doors at the entrance. You could walk straight in. Even from here the four newly-arrived officers could see scores of people still inside, eighty of them at least, spread out over the two tiers.
Many of them seemed in no rush to leave.
To compound the problem, the evacuees were gathering in a crowd not fifty yards from the entrance to the courtyard. A handful of security guards were keeping them what they thought was a safe distance away, but they had naively underestimated the blast radius and power of true plastic explosive. Archer knew that if the bags inside were really full of C4, then without cover, all of these people would die or be critically wounded if the bomb went off.
Inside the centre, a guard directing operations saw the four armed policemen arrive and rushed over, obviously relieved to see them. Archer saw three stripes on his shoulder, denoting his rank.
‘John Pierce, Head of Security,’ the man said as he arrived, out of breath.
Mac didn’t introduce himself. He didn’t have time.
‘Where are the bags, John?’ he asked quickly, as the five of them moved forward into the galleria together.
Pierce pointed up and to his right.
‘On the Second Tier, outside the bar. Barman said he found them all alone, no one around, like they'd been left behind accidentally. Checked inside, saw a load of explosive and some wires.’
Mac nodded, looking at the upper level.
‘Bomb disposal?’
‘I contacted them. They said they’d be here in fifteen minutes.’
‘Do you have CCTV installed?’
Pierce nodded. ‘The monitor room is this way.’
He raised his hand and indicated to a corridor to their left on the lower level.
Mac turned to Porter, who was already moving forward.
‘On it, Sarge,’ he said, rushing off towards the room with Pierce alongside him.
In the left corner of the Lower Tier was a winding concrete stairwell, leading up to the Second Level. Now just the three of them, Mac, Archer and Chalky moved quickly towards it, taking the stairs two at a time and dodging past people still coming down in the opposite direction.
Navigating their way up, the three men reached the Upper Tier and started to fan out, each of their weapons tucked into the shoulder and aimed as they scanned the level.
It was mostly clear. The odd person was still rushing for the stairs, but the whole tier was pretty much empty, most of the remaining people downstairs on the lower level. But it was eerie as hell.
In front of them was the dark foyer of a cinema.
Archer could see boxes of popcorn and drinks that had been suddenly dropped, scattered on the floor with their contents strewn everywhere, telling the story of how quickly people inside the building had fled.
The three officers separated as they quickly checked the rest of the level, moving fast and silently as they searched for any other threats as yet undiscovered.
But the rest of the floor was clear.
After a few moments, they re-joined at the middle intersection of the level.
Together, the three of them looked over at the bar.
They could see the two black bags. They were leaning side by side against each other, seemingly harmless. To an onlooker, they looked just like luggage that someone sitting outside had carelessly left behind.
Staring at the holdalls, Archer felt a brief moment of relief. Thank God the barman had checked inside. If he hadn’t, the centre would still have been packed with people and the contents of those bags would never have been discovered.
Not until it was too late.
He shot his cuff, checking the time on his watch. It had just gone 6:08pm.
He looked around the level.
There was no sign of the EOD, the bomb squad, yet.
‘What do we do, Mac?’ he asked.
The older man was staring at the bags, his face grim.
‘We wait.’
A hundred yards from the shopping centre, the man who’d ditched the bags hadn’t yet noticed the evacuation taking place across the street.
He was the other side from the main crowd, on Upper Street, so he was oblivious to the noise and commotion and also the arrival of the four ARU officers.
Now dressed in the lime-green paramedic’s scrubs, he’d climbed into the back of the ambulance. Completely ignoring the two bodies dumped there, he was kneeling before a package of bricks stacked neatly in a square. Wires ran from the stack, connecting into a mobile phone that was placed on top of the pile. In all, there must have been thirty bricks of plastic explosive underneath.
The man allowed himself a smile. In the past, he’d always had to use home-made plastique mixed in his bathroom basin and bath-tub. The stuff was so volatile that he could never fully relax when he was in close proximity to it. But Dominick Farha’s bank account had allowed for much greater quality in this operation.
And the boy had done good.
The C4 was a devastating weapon, ten times more potent than the home-made crap he’d been forced to use previously and a hundred times more stable. Combining explosive chemicals with a plastic binder to hold it together, the resulting putty was secure and durable, easy to both transport and mould. Once it was wired up, all the plastic explosive needed was a detonator. He’d hooked up a mobile phone to a small blasting cap which was conjoining all the wires. When he called the phone the resulting charge would pass into the cap, triggering a small explosion. That was all the C4 needed to do its job and follow suit.
The resulting chemical reaction of the nitrogen and carbon gases would expand at over twenty six thousand feet per second.
The shockwave would be catastrophic and the explosion instantaneous.
One minute, everything would be fine.
The next, everyone and everything unfortunate enough to be within the blast radius would be vaporised.
Taking up a set of pliers the man set to work. He had to finish cutting some last lengths of wire to connect the last two blocks of C4.
From the inside of the dark ambulance, he was completely unaware of the crowd of evacuees gathering this side of the shopping centre.
For now.
SIXTEEN
Inside the galleria, Mac and the two younger officers were trying to stay calm. They were still on the Upper Tier and there was still no sign of the bomb disposal team. Every second felt like a minute.
Sweating, Archer looked over at the bags.
None of them knew what exactly was inside, but they all knew they could explode in a heartbeat.
Archer checked his watch again anxiously, looking around.
‘Shit. Where the hell are they, Mac?’
Beside him, Mac seemed calmer. But only just.
‘They’ll be here soon. Hang on. Ten minutes’.
‘We might not have ten minutes,’ Chalky muttered, looking at the bags.
‘This is bad,’ Archer said. ‘If those bags go off, we're done for. They'll turn this place into a crater.’
Mac nodded. ‘And kill everyone on the street outside,’ he added. He paused. ‘We hold, Arch. It’s not our job to defuse it.’
The younger man nodded reluctantly.
Suddenly, a noise came from behind them and Archer and Mac spun round, their weapons aimed.
It was just an employee rushing out of the cinema.
He saw the police officers and the empty galleria around him and ran for the stairs, his eyes wide with fear.
Watching him go, Archer turned to a
sk Chalky something.
But he wasn’t there.
Archer swivelled round, and caught sight of his friend.
He was walking towards the bags.
In the same instant, Mac saw him too and swore
‘Chalky!’ Archer shouted. ‘Chalky! Get back here!’
Across the tier, Chalky ignored him. Mac and Archer split, taking up make-shift protection behind two concrete pillars; Mac leaned round, bellowing at Chalky.
‘Officer White, get back here! That’s an order!’
Chalky disregarded him, walking slowly and coolly towards the bar.
He was now only five feet from the two black holdalls.
On Upper Street, the man in the ambulance gently finished fixing one last wire to a remaining brick of explosive. He carefully connected the other end to the detonator and leaned back, inspecting his work.
It was ready.
Stepping over the two dead medics, he climbed back into the front seat, but as he did, something caught his attention to his left across the street.
He saw a crowd gathered outside the shopping centre, being held back by some security guards from the building. Staring at the throng, he cursed.
They found them already?
He was pissed. He figured the bags wouldn’t have been noticed for at least another ten or twenty minutes, giving him plenty of time to get clear of the area.
Stepping out of the vehicle and slamming the door, he walked around the back of the ambulance for a better look. He’d left the package only fifteen or twenty minutes ago, but the place was already being evacuated. He’d planned to detonate the bags when he was on his way. He re-evaluated.
And decided to do it right now instead.
Behind the ambulance, he figured he’d be safe from the blast. Or if he wasn’t, everyone else would get a second surprise on the street, when the explosive contents of the ambulance reacted to the shockwave. He wasn’t planning on dying tonight, but he didn’t really mind if he did, just as long as he took a hell of a lot of people with him.
He pulled a phone from the pocket of the medical scrubs.
And started dialling a number.
Inside the mall, Chalky stood over the two bags.
He could feel his heart racing, adrenaline pumping through his body. To his left, the pub had been completely deserted. Half-empty glasses of beer and wine were scattered on tables everywhere, chairs and bar-stools knocked to the floor. Above the bar, he saw a line of televisions showing muted footage from outside the stadium.
The place was silent and unnerving, like the building was holding its breath, as if something terrible was about to happen.
He knelt down in front of the bags. Across the Tier, Mac and Archer were shouting frantically at him, but to no effect; he’d tuned them both out.
They didn’t have time. Chalky could sense it. He shouldn’t have been here anyway. He should be dead, his head blown off in the house earlier in the day.
But for some reason, fate had spared him.
So he decided to make the most of it.
As he tucked his MP5 behind his back on its strap, he saw that the barman had left the first bag open.
Chalky reached forward to pull open the two sides.
Outside, the man by the ambulance was half-way through dialling the number. A pedestrian walking past saw the ambulance and the man standing there beside it, wearing his green medical scrubs.
‘Oi mate, shouldn’t you be up at the Emirates?’ he offered.
The man holding the phone snapped his attention to the bystander, his eyes burning with hatred.
Startled, the other guy took the hint and averting his eyes quickly walked away, feeling the paramedic’s gaze scorching into his back.
Inside the galleria, Chalky peered inside the first bag.
‘Holy shit.’
It was packed with faded yellow bricks of C4.
Ten of them at least.
Reaching with his hand he felt inside the holdall, feeling carefully amongst the bars and wires. His fingers brushed the contents, but he couldn't seem to find a detonation device.
He turned his attention to the second bag.
Realising Chalky was just going to ignore both him and Mac, Archer ran to the edge of the tier facing Parkfield Street.
‘Get them back!’ he shouted to Pierce’s team, pointing at the crowd which had swelled with curious onlookers.
There must have been close to a hundred people down there.
Across the tier, Chalky unzipped the second bag.
This one was also packed full of C4.
However, this time a phone was nestled on top of the bricks.
He could see that it was duct taped to a wire that separated and disappeared into the explosives. The detonator. He saw the display on the phone.
T-Mobile. Good signal.
Four bars.
He reached for the phone.
In trial runs, the man by the ambulance had seen the blast radius and sheer power of an explosion like this. Cover made all the difference. He knew the thickness of the ambulance should technically save his life.
One thing many people misunderstood about an explosion was what the most lethal aspect of it was. Most assumed it was the resulting fireball, like the ones they’d seen in the movies, but the terrorist holding the phone knew it was the shockwave. Whenever an incendiary device explodes, the chemical reaction releases an enormously powerful ball of energy. When that energy comes into contact with a person, it hits the inside of their body like a thousand small sledgehammers with knives taped to the end. All the blood vessels in their lungs rupture, and they drown in their own blood. In World War 2 the American soldiers had called it shocklung, a horrific, slow and agonising way to die. The terrorist holding the phone could see why Hollywood preferred the fireball.
However, he figured the ambulance was solid enough to protect him from the explosion and blast wave.
Moving behind the vehicle, he raised the phone, the number dialled in.
He took a deep breath.
And his finger moved to Call.
Inside, Chalky had the phone in his hands.
Outside, the terrorist smiled.
And he pressed the button.
‘Boom,’ he whispered.
Grabbing the wire at the same moment, Chalky squeezed his eyes shut and yanked the phone from the cord, as hard as he could.
He froze.
Nothing happened.
A split second later, a shrill ringtone echoed around the shopping centre.
It was coming from the phone; it purred and danced in his palm as it vibrated from an incoming call.
The young police officer looked at the caller ID.
Private Number, it said.
Without a thought, he pressed Answer, putting the phone to his ear.
Silence.
Whoever was on the other end wasn’t expecting to talk.
Chalky heard a rustle, and someone breathing. Listening.
‘Too late,’ Chalky said.
He heard a sharp intake of breath.
Then whoever was on the other end hung up.
