Fantastic Schools: Volume 2

by Nuttall, Christopher G.

  Niall sniffed.

  The captain waved towards a tabletop model. “The police built this for us.”

  “Wow,” Constance said. “A country house in the middle of London.”

  The intelligence officer did not seem to mind. “Yeah. It has a private garden, the second-biggest in London after Buckingham Palace. It’s surrounded by this triple line of trees. That ensures privacy and deters snipers, but it means we can’t see what’s going on.”

  “We believe that the aggressors are holed up in the central section. We estimate between eight and ten of them. There aren’t enough of them to control the whole building …”

  The captain took over. “This building is only three stories high, but wide, as you can see. The plan is to force an entry at both ends at once. We can’t approach from the front—this lawn is too open. The back has this wide carriage drive. So, it’ll have to be from the sides. We want to attack them from all directions. And that includes from above. So, one team will break in via this skylight, then force their way down. When they’re in place, the other teams will attack at ground level.”

  He turned to a flatscreen showing a picture on YouTube. The image was a street, curving round to the left, lined with trees. “This is the view of the front gate. As you can see, the trees obscure everything inside the fence. The media are aware of the situation and set up this camera. It’s on a mobile crane. The police are keeping them from getting any closer, but we can’t stop them from streaming this view. If we use this route, we’ll be on YouTube. And the perps will see it.”

  Constance asked Mr. Stuart, privately, whether there was a spell for taking out a CCTV.

  “Not as such. I could fry the electronics. But that would alert everyone.”

  “Yeah, I’d forgotten that.”

  The captain said that three of the male students, and the teachers, would go through the garden or over the roof with the soldiers. The girls would stay in the ‘mobile headquarters’ with the commander.

  Constance realised her role would be important, but boring. At least, she wouldn’t have to wear a balaclava.

  The captain asked whether any of them had practiced abseiling. Mr. Stuart, Niall and Constance said yes. The captain led them into the gym. “Show me.” A series of stout ropes dangled from the ceiling.

  “But what’s it for, sir?” Niall said.

  “One team has to descend by helicopter,” the captain said, and Constance nearly wet herself. “Have you ever done any bungee jumping?”

  She shook her head. “No. There’s no skill in it.”

  But, despite her fears, she decided to go ahead. They gave her a pair of gloves. An instructor climbed up first and held the rope for them.

  “The helicopter will have a jumpmaster,” The instructor was gruff but patient.

  She did not want to make things difficult for him. She grabbed the rope and managed the descent without disgracing herself. Her second attempt was neater than her first.

  The captain told them that Niall was better than the teacher, but Constance was worst. She hid her relief.

  He explained there was time for a couple of practice runs. The army engineers had built a mock-up of the key section of the building. Niall joined the rooftop team, and she was paired up with him. She established rapport with him, for practice.

  “You can’t carry a box of visiting cards around,” she said.

  “No. I’ve got your card in my pocket.”

  Then they went in. The girls stood in a row opposite the captain, their stopwatches ready. The other girls reported, one after another, that their teams were in place. The captain turned to Constance.

  “Red Team are in place, sir.”

  “Tell the rooftop team to go in.” Constance passed this on. Then they waited.

  Niall kept her informed of his advance. ‘Constance, we’re on the roof of the mock-up.’

  She relayed this to the captain, who nodded. “Tell them to advance to the skylight. As fast as they can.” So, she passed this on.

  Then things went wrong. ‘Constance, this is Niall ... We have a problem. I’ve put my foot through the plasterboard in the roof mock-up. I fell. I think I’ve broken my leg.’

  Constance gulped and explained this to the captain. Everyone on the headquarters team, including the Talkers, stopped to stare. The captain came to a decision. “The other teams are to carry on with the exercise. Are they in position? All of you - give me an update. And we’ll need a stretcher.”

  Twenty minutes later, they held a hurried debriefing. Niall was present, his leg in temporary splints.

  The umpire gave a brief summary, then said that he judged the assault to be successful.

  “Thank you,” the captain said. “We were lucky there was only one hitch. In the real thing, we can expect more.” He pointed at Constance. “Somebody has to take his place. You have the most common sense.”

  The teacher complained, but the captain said he was needed in the garden sniper team. “Their role is crucial. The roof team are mainly a diversion - or a reserve.”

  So, Constance and Niall changed places. He gave her a tip. “Your visiting card—It’s almost useless in your pocket.”

  She thought about it and taped his card to her left sleeve. Instead of a balaclava, she was given a fire-resistant hood, with a built-in radio, and a respirator. They all had radios but were given strict instructions not to use them. Communications were her responsibility.

  The sergeant of her team was grumpy. She could guess why. Having to work with civilians was bad enough; children was worse still—and now a girl. He told her he expected her to be as quiet as a cat. She wondered how she could be cat-like in army boots.

  The second practice began. She touched Niall’s calling card and subvocalized, ‘Red Team is ready to go.’

  The sergeant was surprised. “You don’t speak out loud?”

  “I can if you want to, for the practice.”

  “No. We keep as close to the real thing as possible.”

  Niall told the Red Team to make their way up to the roof. She caught the sergeant’s eye and pointed.

  She noted that the men, boots and all, were stealthy. She hoped she could complete the practice without putting her foot in it, either literally or metaphorically. They reached the fake skylight. The sergeant pointed at her. She nodded and reported this to Niall, then waited for the go signal.

  ‘Constance, this is Niall. Tell them to go.’ She gave the agreed hand signal. The sergeant told her to follow them in, then wait. He led his men inside. And that was that.

  At the debriefing, the captain asked the sergeant for his judgement.

  “She’ll do.”

  She felt flattered by this modest praise.

  They took another minibus across London to their target.

  One of the men was from Fiji. He shyly asked where she was from.

  “I grew up in East London. But my family come from Iraq.” Her fear made her talkative, so she explained that her father’s family were political exiles. “Royalists. My grandfather fled when the kingdom was overthrown. Not that I want to make anything of it, you understand.”

  “Iraq—So you’re a Muslim?”

  “Yes.”

  The sergeant intervened. “They tell me you were in the OCC.”

  She was surly. “Yeah. I dropped out after a year. I realised they were trying to make us into Ruperts. And I wasn’t having that.” The men grinned at this slang term for junior officer.

  “You don’t like Ruperts?”

  “My dad was in the army.”

  “You would make a good officer,” the Fijian said, trying to be polite.

  “Shut up,” the sergeant said. “She would make a terrible subaltern. Make a good sergeant, though.”

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  “Not at all. But guys need experience to earn their stripes. It takes staying power. Unlike a Rupert. He gets his commission as soon as he steps out of university.”

  Constance sus
pected it wasn’t as simple as that, but she wasn’t going to contradict the sergeant.

  The eldest trooper leaned forward. “Where you from, Constance? When you talked to the officer, I thought you was posh. But now …”

  “They all talk Estuary English where I grew up, like I said. But when I went to that school, they soon made me learn to talk posh. But I told myself, I won’t forget my Estuary English.”

  “This is Regent’s Park,” the sergeant said.

  They passed through the park gates and turned along the ‘ring road’ that ran past the house. A fine rain was falling. They passed half a dozen cameramen, held back by a police officer.

  Three large police vans were parked on the pavement, close to the fence. The three vehicles made up the police ‘forward control point’. Their overt task was to stop cars, pedestrians, and journalists from going past the residence. Their real task was to conceal the fence from the media and their cameras.

  The minibus pulled up alongside the police ‘mobile crisis centre’. The officer said the police Assistant Commissioner was controlling things from one of the vans. “The southern end of the house is just through the trees.”

  The team climbed out of the van and into the police ‘mobile crisis centre’. They were instructed to sit in a corner. Constance kept quiet and listened. They were cramped. After a few minutes, she decided she would have preferred another rooftop exercise.

  “This site is within sight of the press cameras,” the captain said. “So, you can’t go outside the ring of vehicles.”

  “Now, we wait until dawn. Then another team takes over.”

  The police negotiator was at the far end of the same ‘crisis centre’.

  Mr. Stuart grumbled, in an undertone, that the SAS didn’t need Talkers at all. If they thought their radios were compromised, they could just use their mobile phones.

  The female teacher said that reception of mobiles was not reliable.

  From time to time, an aircraft would fly overhead.

  “We’re under the flightpath to Heathrow,” the captain said. “They’ve been given orders to fly lower than usual.”

  Despite the noise and the discomfort, some of the soldiers managed to get some sleep.

  The police negotiator was talking. “We are curious about the ambassador’s wife …” He was trying to keep his tone neutral—and not succeeding. “I told you, we have contacted the Irish government, but …”

  Was he speaking to the terrorists? She started paying attention. He asked them to reconsider. Constance was interested. Reconsider what?

  They heard a bang from the direction of the house. Constance asked herself whether it was a gunshot. But all of the soldiers around her were suddenly awake and alert. Constance realised she didn’t need to ask what the noise had been.

  The police negotiator spoke to the inspector. “They told us to watch the front gate.”

  Everybody turned to watch the YouTube live stream of the front gate. After a few minutes, two men in camo stepped out of the trees and dumped a bulky object in the road. Constance realised it was a body.

  The police negotiator contacted the perpetrators and asked for permission to retrieve the body. He turned. “They say yes. Two men. But they must be unarmed.”

  Two policemen volunteered to go out with a stretcher.

  Constance realized that the game had changed.

  Dawn (Day 3)

  The army captain climbed into the ‘crisis centre’ and looked round. “I have been told that the perps have killed one of the ambassador’s security guards. The minister has given orders to the police Assistant Commissioner, and he’s signed a document, handing responsibility to us. The Assistant Commissioner wants us to go in immediately. Before they shoot anybody else.”

  Constance’s team climbed into the van, and they sped off to Battersea Heliport.

  The helicopter was blue, not camouflaged, and looked posh. The pilot was an army staff sergeant.

  Constance fingered the card taped to her sleeve. ‘Niall, we’re at the heliport.’

  ‘Constance, you can go at once. Everyone else is waiting for you. Ask the pilot, has his flight-plan been approved?’

  She looked up. “I’ve been told to ask, Staff Sergeant, has your flight-plan been approved?”

  The pilot was truculent. “Now I have to take orders from a schoolgirl.”

  Red sergeant bridled. “She’s just the messenger. She delivers orders from the boss. And the flight-plan?”

  “Yes. But I’ve been told I can only discuss it using secure lines of communication.”

  “That’s me,” Constance said. The jumpmaster winked at her.

  Red sergeant stopped his team. “One last word. Constance must keep out of the fighting. We’re all specialists, and her specialty is communication. So, she must stay back and do exactly that. If things go wrong, her task is to tell the boss what’s gone wrong, not help us out.”

  They climbed in, and they took off. Red sergeant checked her respirator. Niall established rapport and told her to report in when they could see Regent’s park.

  ‘Well, I can see it now ... There’s the Inner Circle, but it really looks like two circles. I can see the house. It’s white.’ To be on the safe side, she checked with red sergeant. ‘Yes, I have confirmation.’

  ‘We can see you, too. Don’t get any closer. A jet will fly overhead in three minutes. Can you ask the pilot to go in then?’ So, she tapped the pilot on the shoulder and shouted. He nodded.

  They flew in a circle, waiting, until one of the jets flew over the park. They could see its lights blinking. Constance gasped.

  “It’s lower than it should be,” the pilot said. “They’re doing that on purpose.”

  Then she felt that itch at the back of her head. Everybody turned. ‘Constance, this is Niall. All the other teams are in place and waiting for you. Go’.

  So, she tapped the pilot on the shoulder. He nodded.

  They flew in close, losing height. The jumpmaster opened the door and deployed the ropes. They flew over the trees.

  Constance could see the formal garden. Then they were over the roof.

  “Now,” the jumpmaster said.

  Red sergeant went first. Then, one after another, the men grabbed the ropes and slid down.

  Constance felt a moment’s doubt. But the jumpmaster was waiting. She got a good grip and slid down.

  She landed safely. They made their way forward, as fast as they could, avoiding the forest of aerials, telescopic poles, wires, and satellite dishes. The Fijian was the biggest man on the team. But, somehow, he was the most catlike.

  The tiles were slippery. Constance realised that the roof was also steeper than the mock-up. The sergeant slipped—but then recovered his balance. The sergeant waved them on.

  Then Constance saw it—the glass of the skylight. The Fijian knelt beside it. For the first time, she had a chance to draw a breath. They forced open the skylight.

  She touched Niall’s card. ‘Niall, this is Constance. Tell the captain, we’re down, we’re down, no casualties. We’ve reached the skylight.’

  ‘Right. Tell them to go.’

  Red sergeant climbed down. She had to wait for her turn. ‘Niall, this is Constance. Tell the captain, they’re going in, they’re in—.’

  She heard a series of bangs followed by the tinkle of broken glass—the snipers in the garden had fired their tear gas canisters through the windows.

  She waited while the last man climbed in. She saw two motor vehicles smash through the front gate. The vans drove along the carriage drive and up to the front door. The teams jumped out of the vans, ignored the door, and climbed through the windows on each side.

  Now that the need for secrecy was gone, her headphones were full of excited reports and terse commands. She heard shots. It was not the tear-gas canisters this time.

  She felt that familiar itch. She almost said, ‘Not now, damit!’ Instead she said, ‘Niall?’

  ‘Constance, this is Niall.
The boss wants you to get off the roof. We can’t risk the news types spotting you.’ So, she climbed down inside.

  Red sergeant and his men were already running along the corridor to the staircase. She hurried after them. At the top of the stairs, Red sergeant stopped and turned. “You! Stay here.”

  She was offended. But his order was perfectly reasonable. She contacted Niall and reported in.

  ‘Constance, thanks for letting me know. But the boss is very busy right now.’

  She waited. Her respirator itched. Then she heard a terse report over her headphones. “Three of the hostiles are not accounted for.”

  A minute later, she encountered someone running up the stairs. He was carrying a handgun. He was wearing camo, not assault team black. And no respirator.

  He snarled. “Stop. You’re not going anywhere.” His accent was American.

  For a moment, she felt guilty. She was a schoolgirl, in a strange house without permission. She was trespassing.

  Then her brain took in the handgun and realised that he was trespassing, too.

  She had to act fast, so she conjured up the spell that came easiest to her, a fireball. One teacher had compared it to napalm. She made no effort to put any force behind the spell. The ball of heat splattered against the man’s flame-resistant jacket and stuck there, smouldering. He stared down at it and screamed. She used the opportunity to take a couple of steps back up the stairs.

  “Devil! What did you do?” The guy should have taken his jacket off. But that would have meant putting his gun down.

  She hesitated a moment, then used a pushing-spell to knock him off his feet. He fell, slid down the stairs and rolled over. Had she used too much force? But he got to his feet. He had dropped his gun.

  She heard more shots from downstairs. The man turned along a side-corridor.

  She wondered whether she should tell Niall. But the need for secrecy was gone. She used her radio. “This is … red five. There is a lone hostile on first floor. Heading north.”