by Tanya Allan
“You have the chemicals?”
“Yes. At a safe place.”
“In a town?”
“No, as per the instructions, I have found an isolated, rural place to keep them.”
“Good. I will need a van. We can take the van, collect the fuel oil and sugar and then go to the chemicals and I will build it there.”
“You have the detonator?”
He smiled and patted his briefcase.
“You have a target?”
Ben looked at Shamin, who smiled and nodded.
“Oh, yes, I have found a target.”
The assembly room was full, so as Mrs Lambert took to the stage, the noise level dropped. The girls looked at the rather portly, sweaty man with Mrs Lambert.
“Girls, this is Mr Porter, from the Chiltern Ornithological Society. At very short notice, he has very kindly agreed to deliver today’s illustrated lecture on the Red Kite and its remarkable come-back in these isles. He has agreed for a select few to accompany him to one of their hides in some nearby woods to watch the pairs as they come in for the evening to roost.”
The lecture was, as could have been predicted; despairingly dull, if you didn’t happen to be an aficionado of the Red Kite. For the fifty-six girls seated listening and watching the movie, precisely nil were interested. Two, however, at least made an effort to look interested, as Keira and Shannon were angling to be on the bus trip to the woods.
The lecture ran on for an hour, after which questions were encouraged from the semi-comatose girls. The lucky Mr Porter was allowed to take tea in the staff room, with the jolly enthusiastic members of staff, who had (some of them) actually enjoyed the lecture. After tea, those girls who wanted to go were asked to congregate by the school bus in casual walking gear.
Five members of staff (including Mrs Lambert) rolled up to be met by twelve girls and the stalwart Mr Porter.
“Is this all?” asked Mrs Lambert, hardly surprised to see just ten other girls with Keira and Shannon.
“Far better a few who are enthusiastic than many who aren’t,” said Mr Porter jovially.
The plan, or rather, Mrs Lambert’s plan was for them to accidentally find the terrorist’s stash of chemicals. This would initiate a call to the authorities, who would probably want to start a surveillance operation to catch those responsible, and so leave the college free from all connection other than just the accidental discovery.
The problem with finely made plans, as they were to discover, is that things happen to completely screw them up.
Mr Porter took them to the right woods, and indeed, to the exact spot where they’d found the stash of chemicals just the previous night.
Only instead of a hidden pit was an empty hole in the ground. The chemicals had been moved.
Keira recalled that just as the bus approached the gateway, a scruffy van had passed them on the road. She hadn’t thought about it, but now put two and two together.
“Oh dear!” said Mrs Lambert. Despite arranging things as quickly as she could, it hadn’t been fast enough.
“Distract them!” Keira said, and set off down the lane at a run.
“How?” bleated Mrs Lambert, finally stumped.
Shannon shrugged and managed to fall into the pit, thereby distracting everyone for the time that Keira needed.
Dressed in trainers, a pair of jeans and a tee shirt, she did not feel ready for this.
She started bounding as soon as she left the woods, but the van could be anywhere now. Taking a risk, she jumped high, and tried to use altitude to see where the van was.
She had a reasonable sense of location and direction, so only guessed that terrorists might well make for a centre of civilisation, like London, rather than some fields and woods. There was only one way to London from here, and that was the busy A road that ran close to the college.
Sure enough, there was the van, in a queue of traffic at the roundabout waiting to get onto the A413.
But what the hell was she going to do now?
She landed in a field close to the road, and saw only that two people were in the front of the van. It was the same van as the other night, so she could not see if anyone was in the back. It was slow, so she imagined that it was full.
The van entered the main road and headed towards London. Taking a risk, Keira bounded ahead of the van, so that she was able to reach where the A413 met the A40 close to where her uncle and aunt lived at Denham. The problem was that there were loads of people about, and she really did not want to be seen flying by anyone.
Superman and all the others never had this problem. There was a van with a big lump of explosive stuff on board. She had no way of knowing whether it was already a bomb, or they were moving it so they could make it into a bomb. She didn’t even know who was in the van. She heard two people the other night, but she would never be able to identify them from their voices. The woman was called Shamin; that was all she could remember.
Then she remembered the number plate.
Taking out her mobile, she dialled 999.
“Emergency, which service do you require?”
“Police please,” she said, amazingly calm.
She heard the operator contact the police control and then tell the police operator her mobile number.
“Police, what’s the nature of your call?”
“Hello, yes, this might seem a bit odd, but I’ve just seen a van with two huge containers of ammonium nitrate in the back. It was weird because for some reason this stuff was being stored in a pit in the woods near my college.”
The operator suddenly took her seriously.
“What’s your name?”
“Keira Frost.”
“Where are you, Keira?”
“I’m following the van,” she lied. “A friend gave me a lift.”
“Where is the van now?”
“On the A413 approaching the A40 at Gerrards Cross, heading towards London. There are at least two people in the van that I can see. I think they’re Asian or Middle Eastern.”
“Tell me about the chemicals?”
“They were in two big yellow drums. They had ammonium nitrate on the labels. I remember that from science. It’s fertiliser that the IRA used to make bombs with, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Where was it?”
“They had hidden them under a plywood cover in a pit in the woods near our college. We went bird watching a few nights ago and found them there. We took our teacher back today and were going to show her when we saw the van leaving the woods.”
“Do you still have sight of the van?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“What’s the number?”
She told him.
“Where is the van now?”
Keira looked up the road, and along came the van.
“It’s on the dual carriageway of the A40 heading down the hill towards the A412 and Denham. The M40 is not that far away.”
“How close are you?”
Keira watched as it drove past where she sat on the fence of a big field.
“A few cars back. There are definitely two people in it; a man and a woman. I think there might have been someone in the back. I didn’t get a good look.”
“We’ve got a helicopter on way. What vehicle are you in?”
Keira hesitated. What could she say?
She gave the Lambster’s car details, but pretended that they couldn’t remember the number.
“That’s fine. Keep the commentary going until we tell you that you can leave it.”
“Shit!” Keira said to herself. Taking a quick bound, she jumped ahead of the van and watched as it turned onto the M40, but instead of heading towards central London, it pulled over and let a man out of the back. Then it shot under the M40 and headed west, towards Oxford.
“Where the hell are you going now?” she asked.
“A man has just jumped out. He’s a scruffy little man with a backpack. He’s wearing grey trousers and a black anorak. He’s Asian or an Arab, I th
ink. The backpack is blue. He’s walked under the motorway and is heading towards Uxbridge on foot.”
“Where’s the car going?”
“West along the M40 motorway.”
“Keep going.”
“It’s in the left lane, so it’s going to join the M25.”
Keira was about to jump when she heard the sound of a helicopter above her.
“It’s too far ahead,” she said, watching as the car indicated and joined the traffic onto the M25 heading south.
“We have it now, both on CCTV and the helicopter. Can you see the other man?”
She turned and saw the solitary figure walk past an Indian restaurant on the left hand side of the road towards Uxbridge.
“Yes, he’s still walking. I can follow on foot, if you like?”
“Good, we’ve got the van, so follow the man but don’t get too close. A car is heading from Uxbridge. What are you wearing, Keira?”
“Jeans and a tee shirt.
“Okay, just stay behind the man, don’t get too close.”
She was now walking, about a hundred and fifty yards behind the man. A silver police car with Metropolitan Police on the side came out from Uxbridge and drove past the man. It then did a U turn and pulled alongside her.
“Are you Keira Frost?” asked the female officer in the passenger seat.
“Yes.”
“Is that the man from the van?” she asked, pointing at the man a couple of hundred yards ahead of her.
“Yes.”
“Stay here, we’ll go and speak to him,” she said, and the police car started driving off.
The next few moments happened as if in slow motion for Keira. Relaxed and leaving it up to the police, she watched as the police car drove alongside the man and the roof lights came on.
Obviously the female officer must have said something to the man, for he stopped in his tracks.
As the officers prepared to exit their car, the man looked around, and Keira watched as he dropped the backpack, as his right hand started going towards his belt.
“He’s got a gun!” she said, aloud.
The female officer was now half out of the car, but was looking worried as the man was grasping at something at his belt. Her colleague was on the other side of the car, so had a look of impotent horror on his face as the girl must have shouted that he had a gun.
Keira never remembered jumping, but she must have. For the man was looking at the female officer as he drew something black from his pocket and started pointing it at the girl.
Keira hit him from the side, knocking him sprawling, and she just sat on him, so he could not reach the gun that now lay under the car.
The officer got out and was staring down at her with shock on her face.
“He had a gun,” Keira said, still sitting on the squirming man and pointing at the weapon that lay on the ground beneath the police car.
The woman gaped at her, glancing back to where they had left her. Her colleague was faster to react and came around and put the man in handcuffs; none to gently either.
“He had a gun, Sue!” he repeated, sounding slightly silly.
“How the hell did you do that?” the woman, Sue, asked, now that she had her powers of speech back.
“I started running just after you left me. There was something funny about him. I was right,” Keira said.
The male officer pointed to the backpack.
“Grab his pack and let’s see if anything else is in there,” he said.
“I wouldn’t. He could be the bomb maker, so he could have a detonator in there,” Keira said.
“She’s right, Cliff, don’t touch it,” Sue said, nodding in agreement, and got on the radio to call for a van and a firearms officer to deal with the gun.
Keira walked a little distance away and called Shannon.
“Where the fuck are you?” Shannon asked.
“They’ve just arrested a man from the van. He had a gun and tried to shoot the police. The helicopter is following the van onto the M25.”
“That doesn’t tell me where you are.”
“Oh, uh, Denham.”
“Shit. I’ll get the Lambster.”
Mrs Lambert was clued up enough to have returned to the college with her charges, and so was prepared to set off to claim her errant student. She called her on the mobile once Shannon had told her the number.
“I’ll be with you as soon as possible. Will they take you to the police station too?” she asked Keira.
“Probably; I sort of got involved when he produced a gun and tried to shoot the police.”
“Say as little as possible. If anyone asks, I was following the van with you, but you got out to follow the man on foot and I went after the car towards the M25, got that?”
“I had already planned that.”
“Good girl. I’ll bring Shannon, as I can’t trust her to be good when I’m gone.”
“Who was that?” the female officer asked.
“My teacher, the one in whose car I was. She’s coming back for me, but is stuck in traffic.”
“You can come to the station with us. Once the van gets here, they can take the prisoner while we wait for the ARV.”
“ARV?”
“Armed response vehicle. As there’s a firearm involved, we have to call one. They have to prove the weapon and make everything safe.”
“Oh. What about the pack?”
“They’ll check that too. Just how the hell did you cover that distance so quickly?” the girl asked again.
“I’m a fast runner.”
The girl shook her head, unable to discount her claim, as her focus had been on the man with the gun.
“You were bloody stupid, as he could have shot you.”
“Actually, he didn’t know I was there as he was going to shoot you, so I think I’d be a bit careful who I call stupid,” Keira said. Cliff, the male officer holding the prisoner, laughed.
“She’s got you there, Sue. Just thank the girl, as we owe her, big time.”
Keira smiled as if it was of no consequence.
The ARV arrived and two armed officers approached. One of them took the weapon, after photographing it where it lay first. He expertly unloaded it.
“It’s a nine millimetre, and its real,” he said, placing it in a special firearm evidence container.
They pointed out the backpack. The other officer gingerly opened it and then placed it gently on the ground, some way from the carriageway.
“Sod that, there’s stuff in there I’m not bloody touching. I’m calling the bomb squad.”
Another police car arrived, along with a van. The prisoner was placed in the van, where he was searched again before being driven away. A supervising officer came over and spoke to the first pair of officers. Keira watched as Sue kept pointing to her and where she had been when the officers first spoke to her. She smiled, as the distance she had covered was shortened by the officer to a distance her mind could accept.
The sergeant came over to her.
“That was a brave thing you did. You may have saved my officers’ lives, so thanks.”
“That’s okay.”
“What made you think he was going to do something like that?”
Keira shrugged.
“His body language was very defensive when the officers pulled alongside him. I saw him look around as if to see which way to run, so I knew he was going to try something. I never imagined he’d have a gun.”
“How far away were you?”
“Not that far, fifty yards, or so.”
“You did well to cover that distance as quickly as you did,”
“I can run fast when I have to.”
“It’s just as well you can. If you come with me, I’ll take you to the station and we’ll get a statement from you.”
“Can I ask what’s happened to the van?”
“It’s on the M25. It’s been stopped by two police cars and there’s a standoff. It appears they wanted to park it under the M4/
M25 flyover junction. If it went boom there, London and the South East would come to a standstill for days.”
“What kind of standoff?”
“There’s a man holding a female hostage.”
“If the female is Shamin, I heard her talking with the man earlier, and she’s as much a part of it as he is.”
“Where was that?”
“In the woods a few nights ago, a little way from the college. My friend and I were up there; well, we’d sneaked out of college, but we saw them hiding the stuff in this pit. I don’t know what his name is, but he called her Shamin, and she was in it as deep as he was.”
“I’ll call that in. Were they armed?”
“I have no idea. We hid. I was taking the teacher to show her what we’d seen when we saw them leaving in the van.”
As Keira was driven the short distance to Uxbridge Police station, she learned that the incident was still running.
“So, what’s happening on the motorway?” she asked the sergeant, whose name was Mike Gardener.
“Just what I told you. They have two traffic units there, with an ARV and an armoured Land Rover from the airport firearms unit. The traffic cars forced it off the motorway onto the hard shoulder when it refused to stop. It’s sitting there with two people inside. As the information is that there could be a large amount of explosive inside, they’ve shut the motorway in both directions. The man has threatened to shoot the woman if anyone approaches.”
“That’s rubbish, as she’s in it as much as she is. They just don’t want you to see what’s in the van. If it blows up there, people could get hurt. Why not move the car to a safe place; like the middle of a field, or something?”
He smiled.
“It’s not that easy.”
Keira realised that she would have to get there to help, but how?
They arrived at the police station, so Keira was asked to wait in an interview room while an officer was sent for to take a statement from her.
“Do you have a loo I can use?” she asked.
The sergeant told her to hang on so he could find a female officer.
“Do I really have to wait; I’m not going anywhere?”
