by Mark Lingane
“The experts said it was some kind of blow back from when the plane landed. The force was so strong it demolished all the way back to here.”
As they slowly approached the hatchback, Hanson indicated that Chambers should make his way to the other side of the vehicle. “You come in from the front and keep the child’s attention on you. I’ll come in from the rear.”
“Why are you whispering? There’s no voice-activated bomb.”
Smoke drifted gently over the intersection as they crept forward. The bent remains of the plethora of street signs arched over them. Hanson made her way around the large piece of wing spearing up from the ground and approached the rear of the car. It was covered in dust, scratched and dented, with the rear window shattered and partially smashed in, but it was intact.
Chambers was already on the other side, staring intently through the passenger window. He had his hand up, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Hanson waved at him to come back to her side. “Does something about the vehicle feel odd to you?” She motioned hesitantly with her hand near several pieces of twisted metal.
“Yeah, furry, like iron filings spread over a magnet,” Chambers replied. “Spikey.”
“Good analogy, good word. Everything’s spikey.”
Chambers glanced down at her shoes. “Don’t touch the metal,” he said. “You need thick rubber soles. It sent Bremmer flying about twenty yards.”
She stepped back a couple of paces, away from anything metallic, and looked around cautiously. “What did?”
“The charge. Something’s sending a huge electrical charge through the car. It’s turned the vehicle into a Faraday cage.”
“The tower?”
Chambers shook his head. “The tower’s dead.”
“So, we can’t touch the car. How do we get the kid out?”
“Maybe he can crawl out.”
The young boy’s eyes were open and he was staring straight ahead. His breathing was barely noticeable, but other than the dust and debris covering him, he seemed unharmed.
“Hey, kid, are you all right?” Chambers called.
Hanson pushed Chambers out of the way. “That’s not how we do it. Read the procedure.” She approached the window, almost stepping too close to the metal. She leaned backward. Her balance seemed to be missing. She knocked on the glass.
“Can you hear me? I’m DCI Tracy Hanson from the Central London Metropolitan Police and the senior officer in charge of the site. You’re trapped in a damaged vehicle. Please tell me if you’re aware of any injury.”
There was no response.
She knocked again, louder. “Please. Tell. Me. If. You. Can. Hear. Me.”
“He’s not a foreigner. There’s no need to talk like that,” Chambers said.
“We’re stuck. We can’t do anything until we get the door open.”
“So what do we do?”
“We need to get in some equipment to deal with this. We need entrance points to the zone, with lines of direct access. Visual understanding is key. Where’s the chopper?”
“It’s a busy day, the whole city’s in lockdown. It’ll take the pilot hours to get to HQ, unless he cycles.”
She looked around. “Do you know where we are exactly?”
“We’re on Brunel. And if that rubble’s the remains of the Adam and Eve pub, this must be the intersection with Swan Road.” Chambers sat down on a pile of rubble. “I used to come down this way when I was a cadet. I’d look at everyone in the pub, hoping to be one of them one day.”
“Who?”
“The police. It was a coppers’ pub. About the only safe pub to go to in the vicinity, but at the time it wasn’t affordable for a young cadet from Peckham.”
Hanson looked at the hulking and athletic body of Chambers and marveled that he would find anywhere unsafe.
Chambers was looking thoughtfully at the vehicle. “We need to see if the current’s still as strong.”
He got up and stumbled over to the ordinance team, reappearing a few moments later with a small metal box trailing two loose wires with insulated clamps on the ends. He clipped one clamp to the car and the other to a piece of metal half-buried in the ground. He sat down on the rubble and looked at the dial on the front of the small box.
“Whoa,” he said.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s over a teravolt of electricity going through the car. That’s the same as lightning.”
“Why didn’t it kill Bremmer? Why isn’t it earthing on us?”
“They say it’s the amps that kill you, not the voltage.”
“I thought there were about ten thousand amps in a lightning strike.”
“At least. Let’s see how many amps this wonderful box detects.” Chambers flicked a switch then stared at the dials. He gave it a solid smack on the side. “Well, it’s either broken or there are negative amps.”
“Is that possible?”
“No.”
“So it’s broken,” Hanson said.
“Er … no.” He sat back and ran his eyes over the car. “But from my basic physics studies at school, and a certain amount of over-ambitious naivety, I do have an idea.”
He stood up, dusted himself down and looked over at Bremmer. The medics were still tending to him, but he looked okay if badly shaken up. Chambers turned, walked back a few paces, sprinted forward and leaped onto the roof of the car.
“You idiot,” Hanson screamed. “What are you doing?”
“The current will only hurt if you touch the ground. This feels weird.” Chambers held up his hands, rotating them in front of his face. His body twitched.
“Get down off there this instant,” Hanson said, feeling like his mother. “That’s an order,” she added.
He kneeled and reached down for the back door handle. It was locked. “DCI Hanson,” he said, “could you inquire, and quite quickly because I’m feeling very sick, if the ordinance people have a hammer or something to break the glass.”
“I’m going to have to report you for this.”
“Get a hammer.”
She gave him a dark once-over, but scooted over to the team outside the safety-perimeter zone.
Chambers stared at the swirling ground in front of him, fighting the urge to vomit all over the car. He watched his hand leave a trail through the air, blinking in confusion.
Hanson returned with a sledgehammer. “They had nothing smaller.”
“And you believed them? Throw it to me. Please.”
She lobbed the heavy sledgehammer up to him. He caught it and hefted it over his shoulder.
“I am Thor; kneel before me, woman.”
“Smash the window before I have to shoot you.”
“I can’t hit it too hard or the flying glass could hurt the kid. That’s why I asked for a hammer, something smaller than this.” He knelt down and lurched suddenly. He slammed his hand down on the roof to stabilize himself. He blinked furiously and shook his head.
“Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”
“This current’s doing weird things. I feel sick and invincible at the same time.”
He grabbed the sledgehammer with both hands just beneath the head, reached down and tapped gently on the window. He repeated the action, each time increasing the force. Eventually, the glass cracked and shattered. He pushed the sledgehammer handle through the fragmented glass, making a small hole. He leaned in, clicked the lock and opened the door.
The boy was still gasping for air and staring straight ahead.
“Now would be a good time for the chopper to arrive so we can airlift him out without me being electrocuted,” Chambers said. He looked up at the empty sky and sighed.
He lowered himself into the passenger seat next to the boy, who was fastened in place with an overelaborate harness. Chambers could feel the electrical current coursing through everything—him, the car, the boy—and it was burning.
“Hey, kid, I don’t know how you’re surviving, but this pain is pretty
intense.”
For the first time, the boy reacted. His eyes appeared to flick to one side without actually moving. His pupils were dilated and his eyes dark. He tried to move his hand, managing to lift it fractionally, trembling, before it collapsed. The boy’s lips parted, again without seeming to move, but no sound came out.
“Don’t sweat it, sport. I’ll have you out in no time. Once I figure out how.” Chambers tapped his fingers on the seat and glanced at the boy. “You haven’t suddenly gained powers of levitation, have you?”
No response.
“It was a long shot,” he said.
Chambers looked out at Hanson, who was looking in at both of them with a concerned expression. The air danced between them as his vision was distorted with vertical ribbons. He rubbed his eyes.
He placed a foot on the armrest on the door, grabbed the boy under the arms and manhandled him out of the car and up onto the roof. Chambers gasped for air and lifted himself up behind him, managing to avoid touching the ground. They both lay on the roof looking up into the infinite blue sky. Chambers’ mind started to drift, and blackness crept over his vision. Hanson’s piercing shout brought him back to consciousness. His eyes snapped open and he sat up.
“Drop him down to me,” Hanson said. She was standing close to the hatchback with her arms extended.
“It’s vital we don’t touch,” Chambers said.
“No chance of that,” she replied.
He slipped his hands under the boy’s shoulders and lifted him out over the edge of the car. The boy rolled forward off his arms and fell the short distance into Hanson’s care.
“He must be discharging,” Chambers said. His head sagged, and his eyelids felt heavy.
“Oh, gross.” She pulled a face and held the boy away from her.
“No, discharging electrically. Your hair’s standing on end.”
With the boy in her arms, Hanson turned and started making her way back to the perimeter zone.
“Hey, what about me?” Chambers shouted.
“You got yourself up there,” she shouted back.
He sighed and took a giant leap off the top of the hatchback, landing heavily on the ground. His legs gave way and he collapsed onto the rubble, cracking his head against the bricks. The world swirled around him; he was falling, but it all felt so slow.
A couple of medics rushed over to assist him. They touched him and quickly leaped backward, afraid of being shocked, and then manhandled him back to the medical station. He collapsed into a small canvas chair and they wrapped a blanket around him. A medic used a piece of gauze to dab at the blood trickling down his forehead.
“Chopper’s on its way,” an officer shouted.
“Typical,” Chambers said.
Hanson had her arms around the boy, his head resting on her shoulder. She found herself instinctively rocking from side to side.
“Go on,” Chambers said, “admit I looked like a Norse god with the hammer and dust clouds behind me.”
“You’re … an idiot.”
“Hah, you hesitated, so you did think I looked like Thor. I can see it in your eyes.”
She rolled her eyes and looked away. “Thick and shiny as it is, you don’t have the hair for it.”
“Hey, he’s got an orange wristband.” He reached over and twisted the band around. “Cally,” he read.
“Weird name.”
“It’s short for Calchas. It’s Greek.”
“How do you know Greek names?” Hanson said.
“When you live among the dreaded immigrants you tend to learn their names. Otherwise, it’s rude.” He looked at the boy’s wristband. “I’m pretty sure orange means leukemia. And look at him, he’s so thin and pale.”
“Poor kid.”
“I thought you hated kids.”
“Not when they’re sick,” she replied. “I give generously to Red Nose Day every year.”
One of the medics shouted and pointed to the sky, “Helicopter’s here. It’s coming in from the northeast.”
The whop-whop-whop of the rotary blades increased in volume. The sleek black craft was making a direct line from HQ to the landing zone.
The helicopter pilot radioed that he was going to take a pass over the crash zone. He tilted the joystick a few degrees and the chopper banked gently to one side. He could clearly see the massive destruction zone, from the point where the plane had crashed into the ground along the mile of devastation that followed. He lined up with the trajectory. Then the dashboard went blank.
There was a sudden whine. Hanson looked up. The helicopter was falling. Its blades were trying to reverse direction, but it was tumbling like a rock straight toward them.
7
THE HEAD OF security leaned forward on his desk, his fat forearms with nautical tattoos resting on the glass table. He looked down at the paper in front of him with Randeep’s employee details. Two guards stood next to the doorway of the second-floor office.
“Randy, is it?”
“Randeep,” Randeep replied.
“I’m Francis Johnston, head of security, and I have some concerns. Where were you prior to the guards picking you up?”
“I was on level six.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“I’m limited in what I can say, but it involved NDT of certain equipment.”
“Why are you limited?”
“I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act.”
Johnston sighed. “What does NDT stand for?”
“Non-destructive testing. We have some … cutting-edge equipment.”
“Knives?”
“No, highly advanced equipment. So advanced it breaks easily. We need to know what that breaking point is.”
“So nothing to do with looking at pictures?”
“Er, pictures of what?”
“Ladies.”
“… no. Nothing electronic can be taken down there.”
“Someone said you took a piece of paper. Was it a photo?”
“No. It was EM readings.”
“Is that the author of those women’s romance books they keep hiding on their Kindles?”
“No, look.” He took out the piece of paper and laid it on the table in front of Johnston.
Johnston examined the sheet. He held it up to the light. Eventually he handed it over to a young guard standing by the door. “Make a note of this, Weston. Call it exhibit A. Open a file.”
“What’s this all about? I’ve done nothing wrong,” Randeep said.
“As far as I understand, there’s been a breach of protocol.”
“A security breach? That’s a disaster.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. One of the ladies from marketing said you looked at her funny this morning. She says you’ve been looking at her in recent months and saying inappropriate things to her.”
“Like what?”
“That’s not for me to get involved with. I don’t care what’s been going on between you. I just need you to back off, understand? I don’t think you need to apologize, although it wouldn’t hurt.”
Randeep placed his head in his hands. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“I know what you boffins are like, so wrapped up in your work you never get girlfriends.”
“But I haven’t done anything.”
“Yes, I would recommend you push that line. We can put it down to misguided innocence, and I suggest you get some help for your issues. I’ll make a note that I’ve told you that so it’s official. Maybe address that attitude of yours as well.”
Johnston dragged his thick finger awkwardly over the tablet screen and, agonizingly slowly, entered some information. “I’m recommending you have the rest of the week off. I’ll inform your line supervisor. Along with all the what-have-you,” he said, indicating the monitors displaying the unfolding story of the airplane crash, “this isn’t a headache I need today.”
Randeep picked up his backpack and made his way through the open-plan maze of
cubicles. A trail of giggles followed as he passed through marketing. He emerged into the midday light, blinking in the brittle sunlight.
His stomach felt sick from the vibrations and accusations, adding to the ringing in his ears from the siren in the tunnel. He made up his mind and strode off toward South London.
8
HANSON RAN, CRADLING the boy in her arms. She heard, and felt, the impact behind her as the helicopter hit the ground. The surface of the street shook beneath her feet. She glanced over her shoulder. The helicopter had bounced and was tumbling after her. It crashed down again heavily, spraying rubble forward. A rotary blade bent, snapping free and scything through the air above her head. She ducked instinctively. More metal flew past her.
The helicopter bounced up again, twisting over in mid-air and crashing into the side of a building. The shock sent the tail boom spinning around, the rotary blades slicing through the air.
Hanson screeched to a halt and ducked under the circling boom. She timed it perfectly. The blades missed her, and the boom crashed into the building beside the helicopter fuselage. Desperately, she ran up a small incline as the boom bounced back from the building, and a rotary blade twisted and broke free. She risked another glance over her shoulder and saw the blade spinning toward her.
She tripped and fell, shielding the boy beneath her, panting, her lungs wheezing. Her watch beeped. Heart rate: 198. She gripped the boy desperately with her eyes squeezed shut. Her breathing began to settle.
She opened her eyes. The remains of the rotary blade came to a stop inches away from her and gently bumped against her head.
“I thought you didn’t like kids,” Chambers shouted as he ran up. “But it was very brave anyway, and somewhat epic. They got it on tape.”
Her arms were vise-like around the young boy. Chambers slipped an arm under her arm and lifted her to a standing position. He gently pried Cally from her clutches.
“You can let go of him.”
“Huh?” Her eyes were distant and her face was as pale as a full moon.
“The boy. You can hand him over. You don’t need to keep your Vulcan death grip on him.”
“Oh, sorry.”
