The Horse at the Gates

by D C Alden

  The older man mopped his sweating face and neck with his handkerchief. ‘Good. Then I must leave.’ He checked the digital Timex on his wrist. ‘The President will begin his address to Parliament in one hour and twelve minutes. You should detonate the device at exactly two forty-five.’

  The boy checked his own watch and nodded. Already Raza could see his mind was elsewhere as he laid his tools carefully on the table in a precise and specific order. There would be no cries of Allahu Akbar here today, no other jihadi proclamations or exhortations of violence. They were both professionals, men of faith to be sure, but professionals first and foremost. He left the boy alone, closing the bedroom door behind him.

  Raza secured the front of the house, the boy now sealed safely inside. He started up the Toyota and backed off the driveway, idling by the pavement as he searched the street for inquisitive eyes, for waiting army trucks or hovering helicopters. There were none. He jammed the vehicle into gear and headed north, towards the Pir Sohawa Road, the winding, twisting route that would take him up over the Margalla Hills and beyond the range of the blast.

  He’d travelled less than two miles when the pain gripped him, his chest constricting as if a steel wire had been curled around his torso and violently tightened. He cried out and swerved the Toyota off the road, the front tyres bouncing over the kerb as it slewed to a halt in a cloud of red dust by the roadside. He clutched his chest, arms wrapped around his body, then turned and vomited onto the passenger seat. He finished retching after several moments, cuffing silvery strands of bile from his mouth as sweat poured down his face. He needed help, fast. Cars drove by him on the road, oblivious to his plight, the pickup stalled deep in the shade of a stand of eucalyptus trees. He considered calling an ambulance, but that was pointless. The hospital was less than a mile from where the boy now worked. No, he had to get away.

  He pulled himself upright and leaned back in his seat, moaning softly, willing the pain to pass. Through the windshield his eyes searched the densely wooded hills before him, seeking the road that would lead him to safety in the valleys beyond. Another wave of pain jolted him sideways, pulling him down onto the passenger seat, his body settling into the puddle of bile and barely-digested lumps of food already congealing on the cracked leather. With a trembling right hand he reached into his trouser pocket, his thick fingers desperately seeking the familiar shape of his pill box. He withdrew it, flicking open the lid as another knife of pain stabbed his chest. He fumbled the box, spilling the contents out into the foot well below him before he could catch one. He panted heavily, his lungs labouring under the strain, his damp face resting on the hot leather of the door panel, a thin string of saliva dangling from his lower lip. He stared down at them, a constellation of heart pills arranged against the backdrop of the rubber matting, as distant as the milky way itself, and equally pointless. The sound of the nearby traffic faded to a distant hum as he stared up through the windshield, the blue sky barely visible between the dark leaves of the eucalyptus. The thick overhead covering swayed back and forth, the branches bowing and waving before a gentle afternoon breeze. The motion seemed to calm him and the pain gradually subsided, his damaged heart slowing its frantic, erratic rhythms. His breathing retuned to something like normality, yet still he could not move. Instead, he lay still, staring at the shifting trees until they blurred, then faded from view...

  His eyes snapped open, his heart quickening, the palpitations increasing. His breath came in ragged gasps and, once again, he felt the first ripples of pain fanning out around his body. Something was wrong. He was still alive. With a dangerous effort he dragged his left arm from beneath his body. The blue LCD display of the Timex pulsed before his eyes – 14:43. He let his arm drop, moaning in temporary relief. The pain ebbed and flowed across his chest, his arms, his neck, getting sharper with each wave, building towards its deadly finale. Raza settled onto his back and waited for it to be over, briefly wondering what Paradise would be like. He hoped it would be as he’d been taught, that the rewards for martyrdom would be as described, that his heart would be whole and strong once more. He hoped it would be all of that.

  Through the windshield the branches ceased their rhythmic swaying as the breeze suddenly faded, then died. Everything became still. With his good arm Raza tried to shield his eyes as the sky overhead suddenly brightened, turning from blue to a dazzling, burning, searing white.

  The leaves vanished. The trees, vaporised.

  The two-megaton detonation wiped the administrative heart of Islamabad off the face of the earth, killing the President, the Senate, all of the National Assembly, plus every other living organism within a two-mile radius. Beyond that, roads melted and tall buildings were levelled, the blast wave rolling across the flat plain to the west and destroying everything in its deadly path. Thousands died in an instant, thousands more were buried, blackened and burnt.

  High above the earth, in the cold vacuum of space, orbiting satellites and remote sensor platforms recorded the light pulse and the resulting heat bloom, downloading real-time images and digital data to frantic controllers in scores of monitoring stations across a dozen countries. World leaders were woken, or interrupted, or whisked to emergency facilities, depending on their proximity to the ruins of Islamabad. The Indian government was first to denounce the ghastly event, immediately denying any involvement while ordering their armed forces to go to full nuclear alert. The world held its breath and waited.

  While the radioactive fallout drifted on the wind and settled across the Pothohar plateau, the political fallout was carried around the world. Governments squabbled, diplomacy failed.

  Pakistan disintegrated, descending into all out civil war.

  Heathrow, Middlesex

  ‘Eight minutes out, Prime Minister.’

  Gabriel Bryce cursed silently, gripping the tan leather armrests a little tighter as the pilot’s voice hissed inside the soundproofed cabin. Around him the sleek executive helicopter continued to buck and dip as it headed west, buffeted by a strong head wind and violent rain squalls. He glanced at the two close protection officers opposite, noting the tension in their bodies as the helicopter chopped through the deteriorating weather. He took small comfort in the fact that he wasn’t the only one trying to conceal his anxiety.

  Timing could be a real bastard, Bryce observed. His first helicopter trip in weeks just happened to coincide with a major storm front sweeping in from the Atlantic. Devon and Cornwall had already taken a battering and soon it would be London’s turn. The experts said the worst was due in about six hours, which offered Bryce a sliver of optimism. By then he should be safely back in Downing Street, tucked up inside the warmth of his apartment.

  The helicopter dropped suddenly, the soundproofing in the passenger cabin failing to smother the roar of the engines overhead as the pilots fought to correct the stomach-churning plunge. Bryce’s mouth was dry, his heart thumping in his chest. He knew he was in capable hands, that the pilots were experienced, that the state-of-the-art helicopter was fitted with every safety device imaginable; yet still he felt powerless, exposed – scared, if the truth be told. He was a terrible flyer, simple as that.

  It was the fear of crashing, of course. Not the crash itself, but those terrible moments, sometimes minutes, before an aircraft hit the ground, when the crescendo of human howls competed with the ear-splitting scream of the engines, the bone-rattling vibration of a failing airframe, the abject terror on the faces of the passengers. He’d imagined it many times, visually aided by his fascination for air crash investigation programmes. Why he did it, he didn’t know, but he regretted watching them every time he boarded an aircraft.

  He recalled the collision near Heathrow, almost twenty years ago now, between a British Airways triple seven and a Qantas airbus, one of the big double-decked ones. Both planes had a full passenger manifest, the airbus loaded with jet fuel after takeoff a minute or so before. The collision had lit up the night sky, the burning wreckage raining down across the town of Wind
sor. The footage was still replayed on TV occasionally, the impact captured by dozens of local authority CCTV cameras. Bryce recalled a number of charred corpses had the audacity to land within the grounds of the Royal castle, an event that generated almost as much official outrage as the circumstances of the collision itself.

  Yet it had changed things completely, the third runway scrapped, the plans for a new airport dusted off and speedily implemented. Now, London International straddled the Thames estuary, billions over budget and four years overdue, but an example of what could be done if the political will and the necessity were there. All it took was a tragedy on an unimaginable scale for it to happen.

  The helicopter shuddered and lurched to the left and Bryce strangled the armrests once again. He felt a hand on the sleeve of his overcoat.

  ‘Almost there,’ soothed Ella. His Special Advisor sat in the seat beside him, completely unruffled, bundled up in a black North Face parka, her blond hair tied back in a loose pony tail, her blue eyes blinking rapidly behind rimless designer glasses. Bryce could tell she was faintly amused by his aversion to flying, so he focussed his mind on other matters instead.

  ‘What’s the latest from NASA?’

  Ella fished inside her parka and produced her cell. She massaged the touch-screen with practised ease. ‘Still no contact. They’re saying it could be a software failure with the communications code package, either on the craft itself or at the deep space site in Mojave.’

  ‘Poor bastards,’ Bryce muttered, ‘all that way and we don’t even know if they survived the trip.’ The thought put Bryce’s own fear of flying into perspective. The first manned mission to one of Jupiter’s moons, the three-man crew rocketing through space in medically-induced comas, all contact with the tiny craft lost, the deadline for mission failure fast approaching. ‘We’d better prepare something, just in case.’

  ‘I’ve got Sam working on it.’

  ‘Good. Anything else?’

  Ella scrolled down the screen, flicking each line of news feed with a soberly-painted fingernail. ‘The storm is hogging the domestic headlines. Floods and wind damage down in Cornwall, channel crossings cancelled, blah blah. The usual pieces. Nothing else worth mentioning.’

  Bryce grunted an acknowledgement. Their journey tonight had been a clandestine one, descending into the tunnels beneath Whitehall, their footsteps echoing along dimly-lit subterranean chambers until they emerged into the pouring rain outside the old Admiralty building on the Mall. The car that idled by the pavement whisked them unescorted through the sparsely populated streets of Victoria and across the river to Battersea power station. In the shadow of the derelict structure the executive helicopter waited, rotors already turning. Within a few minutes Bryce could feel the strength of the approaching storm as the aircraft battled through the sky across west London. At least it’s dark, he thought. He didn’t care to see the towering wall of black clouds as they headed towards them.

  ‘One minute,’ announced the pilot over the intercom, and Bryce began to relax a little as the aircraft dropped lower and the turbulence subsided. Chain-link fencing flashed beneath them, then a jumbled collection of flat rooftops. The nose of the helicopter tilted upwards as it flared for landing opposite a single-storey building, cloaked in darkness and fronted by a tarmac apron. Bryce glimpsed a solitary figure sheltering beneath the overhanging canopy, then he was lost in a storm of spray as the aircraft settled onto the tarmac. The bodyguards were already unbuckling their belts and Bryce saw the tension in their faces, glimpsed the ugly black weapons concealed beneath their raincoats. There was a pause as the rotors wound down and Bryce saw the figure by the building head towards the helicopter, body bent over, the umbrella held like a shield against the weather.

  The bodyguards piled out of the helicopter and stood guard on either side of the door, their eyes probing the night, raincoats flapping in the wind. Cold air rushed in, snatching the warmth of the cabin away as the man with the umbrella waited by the open door. His thin face had a well-worn look about it, the eyes sunk deep into their sockets, dark hollows under the cheekbones. The corduroy collar of his Barbour was turned up around his ears and a fine sheen of raindrops clung to its waxy surface. He held the umbrella aloft, his hands wrapped in black leather gloves, his eyes squinting against the rain. He had to shout to make himself heard.

  ‘Welcome to Heathrow, Prime Minister. I’m Mike Davies, Chief of Operations.’ He nodded to Ella. ‘Miss Jackson. Follow me, please.’

  Bryce stepped out of the aircraft. Silver sheets of rain swept across the tarmac, driven on by the relentless wind. He buttoned his coat to the neck and thrust his hands in his pockets, following Davies toward the unlit building, where they huddled beneath the canopy. Overhead, one of its metal panels had worked loose and was banging a demented tattoo in the wind. Davies held open a filthy glass door and gestured them all inside. Bryce stamped his wet shoes on the floor, the sound echoing around the darkness. Should’ve worn something a bit sturdier, he realised.

  Davies stooped to pick up a large flashlight by the door and swept its powerful beam around the immediate area. Bryce saw they were in a small terminal building, quite obviously abandoned. The place was devoid of furniture, the floor a mixture of cracked tiles and threadbare carpet, the walls sporting chipped and discoloured patches of paintwork where a myriad of signage once hung. Most of the external windows were boarded up, the surrounding walls heavily stained by water damage, the wind squeezing through the inevitable gaps and moaning through the building. Overhead, rain hammered on the roof and buckets lay scattered around the floor, catching the leaks from above. The place was to all intents and purposes derelict, an unused concrete shell located at the far edge of what was once the world’s busiest airport.

  ‘This is Security Station Four. It used to be the old VIP terminal,’ explained Davies. ‘We’ve had one or two snoopers since we opened for business, but they never get further than the fences.’

  Davies led them through the building, the sound of their footsteps competing with the wind, the cone of light bouncing in the darkness. They filed into a short corridor, at the end of which was a heavy-looking grey door emblazoned with a black stick figure being zapped by a large bolt of electricity. The words beneath read: Danger of Death – No Entry To Unauthorised Personnel.

  Davies tapped the sign and smiled. ‘More subterfuge.’ He produced a swipe card and waved it against a section of the wall close by. The door clicked. Davies placed a hand on it and pushed.

  ‘Please follow me.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Bryce ordered the policemen. He ushered Ella through the door and closed it behind them. Another short corridor, this one lit by a single overhead strip light, the walls grey cinderblock. The smell of decay and damp was gone, replaced by warm air and a low electronic hum. Davies led them into a dimly-lit corridor, a glass partition running along its length. Behind the glass was a high-tech control room, dozens of monitors and coloured lights glowing in the darkness. Bryce estimated there were a dozen or so people scattered around the windowless walls, dressed in civilian clothes and monitoring banks of surveillance screens, the bright wash throwing their faces into stark relief.

  ‘Don’t worry, they can’t see you,’ Davies informed them. He tapped the glass with a knuckle as they headed toward another door at the end of the corridor. ‘All this is one way. The operators in there are monitoring the accommodation areas on the old runways.’

  Bryce watched the watchers as they filed past. He paused behind an operator and the first thing he noticed on the screen was the lack of activity, no doubt due to the late hour and the terrible weather. The camera angles were varied; most were high, some were low, some wide-angled and others narrowly focused. There were interior shots of brightly-lit communal rooms and long, empty corridors with doors on either side stretching into the distance. There were night vision cameras in shades of ghostly green, probing dark and muddy alleyways and deserted open areas. Litter seemed a common feature in almost ev
ery shot, spilling out of plastic bins, piled in corners or tumbling through the barren dreamscape. A sudden movement caught Bryce’s eye, a distant camera capturing a man ducking out of an accommodation block, a burqa-clad woman trailing behind him. The man unfurled a striped umbrella on the muddy steps of the block, then headed out into the night, stepping carefully around the puddles, making no attempt to share the shelter of the brolly with the woman behind him. She hurried after him obediently until they were out of sight.

  ‘What a charmer,’ observed Ella.

  They followed Davies up a metal staircase to his first-floor office; originally an observation deck, the Operations Chief explained as he closed the door. A single desk occupied a space near the far wall, alongside two metal filing cabinets. The other walls were decorated with a multitude of large-scale maps of the Heathrow site, apart from one wall that looked out over the runways. That one was made of a single sheet of glass and Bryce was drawn to it, Ella falling in beside him.

  ‘Jesus,’ she breathed, shaking off her coat.

  It had been just over eighteen months since Bryce had last visited the site, almost two years since Islamabad was destroyed by the nuke. Back then, he’d given a short speech over at Terminal Five, emphasising the need for the countries of Europe to join together, to give aid and comfort to the refugees who’d travelled so far and suffered so terribly. Thirty prefabricated temporary accommodation blocks had been erected, clustered around the old taxiways and aircraft stands of Terminal Five, each housing two hundred people. He’d welcomed the new arrivals, drank coffee, posed for photographs and then returned to London, his duty done. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, a short-term fix; considering the international pressure being brought to bear, the civil war in Pakistan was not expected to last this long. Yet it had, the violence spreading across the country, the refugees continuing to flee westwards, transiting through the Gulf States to Egypt, where over two million people still languished in desert camps outside the cities. From his elevated vantage point, Gabriel Bryce stared out across the expanse of Heathrow and shook his head; it was hard to imagine that an airport once existed here at all.