The Horse at the Gates (12 page)

What, exactly? He recalled a flash of light beneath the door, an ear-splitting bang, an earthquake that shook the ground beneath his feet. He’d felt the floor drop away only to rush back up and meet him. Then the world turned black.

He had to get out of here. He pulled at his left leg again, but it was well and truly jammed beneath a pile of thick timbers sporting rusted, twisted nails. As his hearing returned to something like normality he became aware of the sound of breaking glass and distant sirens. He thought he could still smell gas. That must have been the cause of the explosion. He had to get outside.

He called for help, the words rasping between toothless gums, his throat still thick with dust. He doubted anyone more than six feet away could hear him. He spat again, more blood, more dust. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, an inch at a time, mindful of the broken ribs and their proximity to his lungs. He lifted his chin, peering over the piles of rubble across the floor of his study – and his eyes widened in horror, his jaw sagging painfully in shock.

Number Ten was devastated. The explosion had ripped a gaping fissure from the front of the building and every window had been blasted away. The floor to his study was still intact, along with a section of the landing outside, but beyond that the building was ruined. He searched for his secretary, saw her desk overturned, debris piled against the rear wall as if swept there by a giant’s broom. He thought he saw something pale amongst the carnage, a limb perhaps. He called again, the sound whistling through the gaps in his teeth, but no-one answered. Panting for breath, he turned away, looking across the street where the exterior wall of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been peeled away by the blast, revealing blackened rooms and broken furniture. It reminded Bryce of a macabre doll’s house. On one of the floors a large table hung by two of its legs from the shattered floor above. As he watched, the floor timbers groaned and gave way, sending the table crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust and rubble.

Closer, the staircase inside Number Ten marched up towards the roof as it had always done, the stairwell walls cracked and exposed but still standing, the balustrades dangling like broken teeth all the way to the top floor, where most of the roof was missing. Bryce was stunned, his head moving back and forth as he struggled to make sense of the scale of the damage. He vaguely recalled being told that Number Ten could withstand this sort of thing, that the famous front door alone took at least eight men to carry it, such was the strength of its construction. Bryce couldn’t even see the thing, as the front of the building had gone, the gap wide enough to drive several trucks through.

His arms felt weak and he eased himself back to the floor. He fought the shock, forcing himself to relax. Nearly everyone had been downstairs: Ella, the Cabinet, the press, Downing Street staff. Why couldn’t he hear their shouts, their cries for help, for God’s sake?
Am I the only one left?
He heard more sirens but they still seemed distant. Where were the emergency services? Minutes had passed, maybe more. It was getting darker, he was alone, trapped, with no way of–

He fumbled painfully inside his jacket, his fingers feeling for the cell phone buried in his pocket. He fished it out, checked its smooth silver body for damage. The screen sported a small crack but amazingly the device had survived, the coloured icons glowing in the gloom and the swirling dust. He thumbed the contacts button, scrolling through the list until the saw the name of the only senior minister he knew for sure hadn’t been in the building. He tapped the screen, lifted the device to his ear. A click, a hiss, then the wonderful sound of a distant ringing tone.

Above the sirens wailing in the street outside, above the shouts that echoed around the marble atrium and the continuous squawk of radio transmissions, Tariq Saeed’s sensitive ear picked out the soft warble of his cell, the small device vibrating in his hand as his entourage of aides and security personnel swept into the lobby of the Euro Tower on Millbank. The pulse rippled up his arm and he glanced at the screen as he continued marching towards the bank of elevators ahead.

Then he stopped suddenly.

Around him the scrum of policemen braked sharply, boots squeaking on the polished floor. Saeed paid them no mind. Alive? Impossible. He was too close to the blast, had to be dead. Someone else, then? Doubtful.
Consider every eventuality, plan for every improbability,
he reminded himself. He muted the ring and turned to a senior police officer alongside him. He waved the device in the man’s face.

‘The cell networks. Should they still be operating?’

The policeman shook his head. ‘The order has already been passed, Minister. Transmitter towers are being shut down as we speak.’

‘Then make it happen faster. The terrorists will take advantage of any chink in our armour.’

‘Immediately, Sir.’

Saeed headed towards the elevator that waited to whisk him up to the Emergency Management Centre on the twenty-second floor. As armed guards crammed into the lift around him, the index finger of his right hand found the power button to his cell phone and held it down.

Call ended.

Bryce was confused, his head pounding. It rang, he was sure of it. Before he could punch the button again he heard a shout, then footsteps crunching through the rubble below. His heart leapt. He raised himself up, calling for help until his chest hurt, the word sounding like
‘helf’
through his broken teeth. He peered over a pile of bricks towards the shattered staircase as a head bobbed into view, then a set of shoulders, the form indistinct, masked by dust and cast in shadow. It was a man, wearing civilian clothes.

‘Where are you?’

Bryce raised his arm, above the lip of the desk, above the rubble. ‘Over here!’

The man scrambled towards him, stepping carefully over mounds of shattered bricks, splintered timbers and broken plaster.

‘Thank God,’ Bryce breathed.

‘Don’t move.’

Bryce obeyed, the man’s manner immediately authoritative. He was in his late thirties, Bryce judged, his dark hair cut short and flecked with grey, the pale line of an old scar curving beneath his right eye. He wore a black polo shirt and khaki trousers, the ones with pockets down the legs. Quickly and carefully he cleared a space next to Bryce, kneeling down and shrugging a small rucksack off his back.

‘Thank you,’ Bryce gasped, ‘thank you.’

‘My name’s Mac,’ the man announced, snapping on a pair of purple latex gloves. An intricate tattoo covered his left forearm and a black digital watch glowed on his wrist. ‘Where are you hurt?’

‘My ribs. I think they’re broken.’ Bryce pointed to his bloody jaw. ‘I’ve lost some teeth. And my leg’s trapped.’

Mac probed his head just above his right ear. Bryce winced. ‘You’ve got a nasty cut on the head, too. Did you lose consciousness at any time?’

Bryce nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Ok, just relax,’ Mac said. He ripped Bryce’s shirt open at the torso, running his fingers gently over his ribcage. ‘Can’t feel any breaks. Does it hurt when you breathe?’

Bryce nodded. ‘A little.’

‘Bruised probably.’ He rummaged inside his rucksack, retrieving a small green medical kit. He cleaned and dressed the head wound, wrapping a bandage around Bryce’s skull and securing it tightly. He opened a bottle of water, then gently eased Bryce’s head to the side. ‘Take a swill, spit it out.’

Bryce did as he was told, watching the bloody mixture congeal in the dust below his chin. He felt Mac’s fingers holding his jaw, the other hand gently pushing balls of cotton wool into the gaps in his teeth.

‘No photo shoots for you for a while,’ he said. He inspected Bryce’s leg, then carefully shuffled along on his knees, testing the weight of the timbers, straining to move them. He produced a torch from his rucksack, waving it beneath the pile of debris, scanning the limb. ‘Can’t move it, but I don’t think you’ve suffered any major damage. Wiggle your toes for me.’

Bryce did as he was told, feeling the digits moving in his shoe. ‘I can move them. That’s good, right?’

Mac nodded. ‘Yep.’ He stared up at the ceiling, the sky above. Bryce followed his gaze and the sound of a helicopter filled the air. It buzzed into view, not far above the roof, the noise of the rotors hammering the walls, churning up a dust storm that whipped debris around the remains of the room. Dangling cables twisted violently and paper funnelled into the air. The searing shafts of a search light lanced through the building at crazy angles, slicing through a sandstorm of dust and debris. Mac leaned over, shielding Bryce with his body until the sound of the rotors receded.

‘Fucking morons,’ Mac cursed, spitting dust from his mouth. ‘Probably a news crew. Could have brought the building down.’ As if to punctuate Mac’s words, a sudden avalanche of debris thundered close by and dust billowed up from the remains of the lobby, filling the room with choking black filth.

‘Got to get you out of here,’ coughed Mac. ‘I need help, though. That leg won’t move and neither will those timbers.’ He swivelled around, his neck craning above the rubble. ‘Where the hell is everyone?’

‘I thought – aren’t you part of the emergency services?’ Bryce stuttered. ‘A doctor perhaps?’

Mac shook his head. ‘No, I’m just a civvy. I was in the tube station at Westminster when the bomb went off. Ran over, to see if I could help. Everyone else ran the other way, police included. They must know something we don’t.’

Bryce lifted his head off the floorboards. ‘Bomb?’

‘Definitely,’ Mac said. ‘I had to skirt the crater to get in here. Bloody massive. Car bomb, no doubt.’

‘But I can smell gas.’

‘Probably a cracked main somewhere. It also explains the lack of emergency response. There must be a secondary device.’

Bryce stared again at his saviour. ‘You sound like you’ve got experience in all this.’

Mac pulled his own cell from his trouser pocket. ‘Ex-Royal Marine. Two tours in Afghan, one of them with the UN during the Kabul uprising. Car bombs were two a penny back then.’ He held up his phone. ‘See, no signal. They’ve cut comms, as a precaution.’ He tucked the device back into his pocket then stood up, taking a careful step towards what was left of the landing.

Bryce panicked. ‘Where are you going?’ His eyes caught a movement above, something bright drifting past the shattered roof, darting beneath the blackened rafters. A burning ember floating on an updraft, soon joined by another, then several more. A plume of smoke funnelled past the jagged breach. Something was on fire. Bryce stared in horror at the mountain of dry timbers, the piles of books that surrounded him. ‘Listen Mac, I don’t care what you have to do, just get me out of here.’

Mac saw the embers too, sniffed the air. He didn’t say a word, just stepped over Bryce and tried again to shift the timbers that pinned him. He strained and struggled, teeth clenched, the veins in his neck bulging, sweat glistening on his face. Nothing moved.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he panted, slapping the dirt from his hands. ‘I can’t shift it. The floor’s partially collapsed beneath your leg. I think that’s what saved it, but all this shit on top has got it trapped.’ His head swivelled this way and that, searching. He picked up a thick piece of timber, inserted it next to Bryce’s trapped limb and braced his hands along its length, like a power lifter about to explode into action. He blew his cheeks out hard and attempted to stand, back straight, knuckles turning white as he gripped the wood. Bryce felt a timber against his leg shift slightly. Glowing embers began to swirl through the building, a swarm of deadly fireflies that drifted on the evening breeze, tumbling through the debris and settling on the dry kindling that lay all around.

Bryce’s eyes widened in fear. ‘For Christ’s sake, hurry up Mac!’