Echo of the Reich

by James Becker

  “Remember we’re looking for an Israeli TV truck,” Bronson said, peering through the fence.

  “There are still a hell of a lot of them here.”

  “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

  There were dozens of trucks parked in rows, many with unfamiliar registration plates and bearing logos for TV stations neither man recognized. Large satellite dishes were mounted on the roofs of the majority of the trucks, but most were folded down because the crews would be using the on-site facilities to relay the events being filmed in the stadium direct to the studios in the country where their TV stations were based.

  Bronson and Weeks walked down the side of the fence, looking closely at every single truck as they passed it, alert to anything unusual or suspicious but, as far as they could tell, all the vehicles seemed to be legitimate. Several had their doors open as technicians and other staff bustled purposefully about, getting a few last items of equipment as the media circus prepared for the imminent opening ceremony.

  “This is hopeless,” Weeks muttered, as they strode past yet another group of lorries. “There are just too many of them.”

  Bronson shook his head.

  “I don’t believe that Marcus is planning a suicide trip, for himself or for any of his men, so what we’re looking for, I guess, is a lorry that looks more or less the same as the others, but is probably locked and with nobody working anywhere near it.”

  “Okay,” Weeks conceded. “I suppose that does narrow the field slightly.”

  Bronson shook his head again. “We’re not going to achieve anything wandering about out here,” he said. “We have to get inside this compound right now, find the truck and work out how to stop the device from being triggered.”

  He pointed at a set of gates wide enough for a truck to pass through easily, gates that were of course closed, and beside which was a smaller pedestrian gate set into the boundary fence, with a booth containing the security checkpoint beside it.

  “Just follow behind me,” Bronson said, “because I’ve got a warrant card, and that should be enough to get us inside.”

  Half the skill of being an impostor is attitude. People judge others by their bearing, by the way they walk or the way they talk, and Bronson and Weeks knew this as well as anyone. So as they approached the entrance to the compound where the trucks were parked, both men adopted a slight swagger, trying to exude confidence. They weren’t the only armed police in the area. Several pairs of officers were patrolling different parts of the Olympic Park, and that should also help them reach their objective.

  The civilian staff member manning the entrance in a glass-fronted booth looked up as they approached.

  Bronson stepped forward and held up his warrant card, Weeks right behind him, and strode up to the barrier.

  “Let us through,” he instructed.

  “What’s the problem, officer?”

  “I didn’t say there was a problem,” Bronson replied.

  “But we already have a police patrol covering this area. An unarmed patrol,” he added.

  “And now you’ve got an armed patrol as well, okay? Nobody told you to expect us?”

  “No.”

  “So after you’ve let us through, you’d better check with whoever your supervisor is and find out who needs a swift kick in the nuts.”

  The civilian gave a resigned nod and gestured for them to enter.

  The two men strode on without a backward glance, crossed over to the parking area and then started working their way down between the lines of trucks.

  “There’s something else that might help us,” Bronson said. “As far as I can see, none of these trucks are connected to external power, because the crews are using the built-in facilities in the media center. Before the Bell can be activated, it’ll need some form of power supply, so if you see a lorry that’s got a generator running, that could be it.”

  And almost immediately, they found one. And the truck seemed to fit the bill in other respects as well. It had a Star of David painted on the side, was somewhat battered around the edges, and had the name of a television station that neither Bronson nor Weeks had ever heard of handwritten on the side panels. And from inside there was a distinct noise of some kind of a motor running.

  “God, I hope this is it,” Bronson said. “Cover me, will you?”

  Weeks stepped back a few paces and leveled his MP5 to cover the side of the truck over to Bronson’s right.

  “Ready.”

  Bronson nodded, readied his own weapon, then stepped forward and rapped smartly on the double side doors of the vehicle.

  To his surprise, one of them opened almost immediately, and a man wearing blue jeans and a white shirt peered out.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  As soon as the man spoke, and Bronson could see into the truck behind him, he knew that it wasn’t the vehicle they were looking for. It was very obviously full of recording and other equipment, and he could now identify the noise he’d heard as a heavy duty air-conditioning unit, maybe with worn-out bearings.

  Bronson looked at the man for a few seconds, then turned away, gesturing for Weeks to follow him.

  “Wrong one,” he muttered.

  He walked back to the end of the parked truck and turned right to continue the search.

  53

  27 July 2012

  “Damn it!” shouted Bronson. “Keep looking. I’m certain it’ll have generators running inside. And the doors will probably be locked, because the weapon must be triggered by some kind of timing circuit.”

  “I’ve got it,” Weeks nodded. “Bit of a bloody needle-in-a-haystack job, though. There must be hundreds of trucks here.”

  That was a slight exaggeration, but there were a lot of trucks in the park.

  They walked along the first double row of trucks side by side, looking at every vehicle they passed, searching for any that met the rough criteria Bronson had specified.

  “Hang on a second,” Weeks said, as they reached the end of the row. “All these lorries are parked in a kind of herringbone pattern.”

  “Yes.” Bronson nodded. “So what?”

  “So if that bloke Georg was telling the truth, and the truck only arrived today, it’s probably been parked in one of the spaces off the central avenue. It can’t be in any of these other rows because those vehicles are boxed in by the trucks behind them.”

  “Bloody good thinking, Dickie,” Bronson said.

  They jogged over to the center of the truck parking area and started heading back the way they had come, checking the vehicles on both sides of them as they did so. They had almost walked back as far as the closed entrance gates before either of them saw anything that looked like a possibility.

  And then it wasn’t something they saw, but rather something they heard.

  Bronson stopped short and raised his hand. Even over the all-pervading noise of the crowds of people that surrounded the Media Center, he’d heard something distinctive: a deep rumble, overlaid with a higher-pitched mechanical noise, like a small petrol engine running at constant power. He turned his head to the left and right, trying to identify the source of the noise.

  On the opposite side of the open central avenue was yet another of the heavy trucks, an articulated unit, the sides bearing logos that identified the vehicle as belonging to Karel TV in the Czech Republic, and a quick glance at the registration plate confirmed the truck’s origin.

  “Dickie,” Bronson called, pointing across to the truck and starting to move. “Over there.”

  Weeks trotted across the tarmac, following Bronson.

  “You reckon this is it?”

  “Maybe. There’s an engine of some sort running in this truck,” Bronson said as he stopped beside the truck and looked at it critically. “And there are closed padlocks on all the doors. You wouldn’t normally leave a generator running and then lock up the vehicle. This could be the one.”

  “I thought you said it would be an Israeli truck?”

  �
��I did. And I got it wrong, okay? I suppose the Israelis would have sent their trucks by ship. It’s only just dawned on me.”

  “Right, then. Let’s get inside it and find out.”

  They had no bolt-cutters to remove the padlocks, but Bronson thought a nine-millimeter bullet or two would be just as effective.

  He stepped forward, drew his Walther and aimed the pistol at the padlock that secured the side door of the truck. He fired at virtually point-blank range at the body of the padlock, which simply blew apart under the massive impact.

  But before Bronson could do anything else, he heard the sound of another shot, very close by, and turned quickly to see Weeks tumbling backward, the MP5 dropping from his grasp. And at the rear of the truck, a man wearing overalls was taking aim at Bronson with his pistol.

  Instinctively, Bronson dropped the Walther, and dived sideways, rolling across the ground while simultaneously bringing his Heckler & Koch up to the aim.

  The man fired twice, both shots cracking through the air somewhere above Bronson.

  Then Bronson opened up with the MP5, a double tap followed by another. At least one of the bullets hit the man in the stomach, and he screamed as he fell to the floor, his weapon dropping to the ground.

  Bronson glanced over at Weeks, who lay unmoving on his back a few feet away. Then he ran across to the injured man and seized his weapon. The man was whimpering with pain, but there was nothing Bronson could do for him, or for Weeks. His first priority had to be disarming the Bell.

  He presumed the injured man was one of Marcus’s men, left to guard the vehicle and ensure that nobody interfered with the countdown to the triggering of the weapon.

  The noise of the shots had reverberated from the sides of the vehicles parked all around, and the sound made by a submachine gun firing is very distinctive. Bronson knew that he’d soon be surrounded by armed police officers. He had to confirm that this actually was the truck containing the weapon as quickly as he could because if he’d gotten it wrong it would be too late. The opening ceremony would be starting in less than five minutes.

  He glanced behind him: a uniformed police officer was running from the compound. The alarm had already been raised, and within minutes the area would be swarming with police. Time was running out.

  He took another glance around him, just in case there were any other armed men lurking in wait, then strode back to the side door of the truck, pulled it open and climbed inside, holstering his pistol as he did so.

  It was immediately obvious that this vehicle was very different from all the others he’d seen inside. There was no sign of any recording equipment or the spare parts and cables and lights and microphones Bronson had glimpsed in other vehicles. All that was in it were three large petrol-powered generators in locked steel cages, their motors running, exhaust pipes running up to the roof, and armored power cables vanishing beneath the floor of the truck. Beyond them, the rest of the truck was blocked off by a steel partition with a single door set into it. The door was also made of steel and protected by a combination lock.

  Set into the partition was what looked like a viewing panel, a slab of heavy glass secured inside a steel frame. Bronson walked across to it and peered into the second compartment.

  He’d never seen anything like it.

  In the center of the hidden space was an object that looked remarkably like a bell, mounted on a steel framework. It was about five feet tall and perhaps three feet in diameter, made of some kind of metal that appeared bluish in color in the dim light. From the base of the object, a mass of cables extended vertically downward, disappearing below the floor.

  On one side of the truck was a control panel, further armored cables snaking from it under the floor and presumably connected to the object that lay behind the steel partition.

  He’d found the weapon, but Bronson had not the slightest idea how to disarm it, or even how to get inside the locked inner compartment.

  He pulled out his mobile phone, dialed 999 and told the operator who and where he was and that he needed a bomb-disposal expert there, fast.

  In the background he could hear the scream of sirens, and a few moments later distorted and amplified voices as officials apparently tried to initiate an orderly evacuation of the area. That was far too quick to be in response to his call, and he guessed it was because of the shooting a few minutes earlier.

  Bronson ignored the noises outside as he struggled to make sense of the control panel, trying to work out what the various cables did, but his efforts were hampered by his lack of knowledge about the type of weapon he was dealing with. And, of course, by the fact that he knew almost nothing about bomb-disposal tactics.

  The only thing he could tell for sure was that there was some kind of timing circuit incorporated into the control panel, because right in the center of the instrumentation was a digital counter, which was ticking off the seconds. At that moment, the number stood at one hundred and ninety-one—just over three minutes. He pressed buttons, but nothing happened. Then he spotted a keyhole on one corner of the panel, which presumably locked the controls.

  As he stood there, staring down, he felt a sudden waft of air, and a narrow beam of light illuminated the interior of the truck.

  “It’s too late now, you know,” an unpleasantly familiar voice said, from behind him.

  Bronson whirled round, his hand dropping to his Walther, but he was too late.

  Marcus stood at the back of the truck, having presumably released the padlock that secured the rear doors and climbed in that way. His own pistol was pointing straight at Bronson.

  Bronson knew that if he tried to draw his Walther, or reach for his MP5, he’d be dead in less than a second. At that range, Marcus couldn’t possibly miss.

  “The timer’s just passed three minutes, Marcus,” he said. “I would have thought you’d be miles away by now. Or are you planning on waiting around for the bang?”

  The German shook his head, then laughed shortly.

  “You really don’t have the slightest idea what you’re dealing with, do you? This isn’t a bomb, you bumbling idiot. It’s something far, far worse. But luckily it’ll have no effect on me. Or on any of my men.”

  That wasn’t what Bronson had expected at all.

  “So what is it? And how come you’re immune?”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “You’ll find out. And don’t bother trying to do anything about the timer, because you can’t. Everything’s armored and protected, so unless you’ve got something like a thermic lance to cut through the cables, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And even then, it only needs the power supply for a couple of minutes after it’s triggered, because then the reaction becomes self-sustaining. So there really is nothing you can do.”

  Bronson stared at him. What the German had said made a horrible kind of sense. It looked as if the Laternenträger was indeed a kind of lineal descendant of the Nazi’s Die Glocke, miniaturized, improved and refined. That probably meant it was the worst possible kind of dirty bomb, or rather something like a rogue nuclear reactor that would spew out lethal radiation for as long as it was working, turning northeast London into a desolate wasteland that would make the area around Chernobyl seem like a paradise.

  And if Marcus and his men were immune, that could mean only that they knew the type of radiation the device would produce, and had taken drugs to neutralize its effects. Bronson had a vague recollection of antiradiation drugs from his time in the army, and he recalled that iodine could be an effective treatment in some circumstances.

  “I could kill you right now, I suppose,” Marcus said, “but that would just deny you a lot of suffering, so I won’t. You shot my man outside in the stomach, and he’s dying slowly and in agony, so I think it’s only fair that you should enjoy the same kind of death.”

  Marcus lifted the pistol and took careful aim.

  54

  27 July 2012

  Bronson tensed, knowing that now he had to reach for his pisto
l, because he had nothing left to lose.

  But before he could move a muscle, two shots rang out and the German seemed to crumple to the floor of the truck.

  Bronson swung round to see Weeks framed in the side door, the Heckler & Koch MP5 held steady in his hands.

  “I thought you were dead,” Bronson said.

  “I deal in illegal weapons, Chris. Wearing a Kevlar jacket under my clothes is second nature to me. The bullet just knocked the wind out of me, and my chest’ll be bruised for weeks. Is he the last of them, do you think?”

  “I bloody hope so.”

  Bronson turned back to the control panel as Weeks hauled himself up inside the truck.

  The timer now stood at fifty-seven seconds.

  “We need bolt-croppers or something like that, to cut the cables that power the device,” Bronson said.

  His voice radiated the tension and resignation he was feeling. Because at that moment he believed Marcus was right, that there really was nothing they could do to stop the Bell.

  “There are police cars and a fire engine heading this way,” Weeks said, peering out of the open rear door.

  “Yes,” Bronson said, because now he could hear the sound of the sirens getting closer. “But will they get here in time?”

  “Can you shut it down from here?” Weeks asked, stepping over to the control panel.

  “Not without the key that unlocks the controls, and probably not even then. The key,” he repeated.

  He ran over to Marcus’s body and swiftly searched it. He pulled out a bunch of keys, but as soon as he looked at them he knew they were house keys or similar, and he slipped them into his own pocket. But around the German’s neck he found a chain with a single key attached.

  Bronson ripped off the chain, ran back to the control panel, stuck the key in the lock and turned it. Immediately, the various controls lit up, but Bronson could see nothing that looked like an abort switch.

  The timer reached seventeen seconds.