Crisis (Luke Carlton 1) (53 page)

Damian Groves spoke first. Ecuador might have been an SIS operation but as the MI5 senior investigating officer on the case it was down to him to set the wheels in motion. And his reaction, in those first hollow seconds, was to say exactly what they were all thinking: ‘Fuck.’ Groves knew instinctively, the moment the phone call ended, that intelligence had run its course.

‘Get Grimshaw on the line – NOW!’ he shouted. ‘He’s got to get his EXPO teams out there this second!’

From Thames House the call went straight through to the Counter-terrorism pod inside the control room at Lambeth police headquarters, a vast warehouse-like room where the Gold and Silver commanders were already flat out running the policing for
Remembrance Sunday. Andy Grimshaw, commander of the Met’s SO15, the Counter-terrorism Unit, had just crammed a Rich Tea biscuit into his mouth while taking a slurp from a mug of lukewarm tea. Already that morning he had had to deal with two false alarms and one hoax bomb scare.

‘Grimshaw,’ he said tersely into the handset, sending a shower of biscuit crumbs over his workstation. He listened, tapping his fingers on the desk, for just thirty seconds. ‘OK. We’re on it,’ he said, and slammed down the phone.

At 1013 hours, from the forecourt of Curtis Green, on the site of the old Whitehall police station, a pair of dark blue Range Rovers drove out onto Victoria Embankment, past the tourists taking selfies by the Thames, and turned right towards Big Ben. If anyone had been watching them, on that bright and breezy November morning, they might have noticed how low their chassis were to the ground. Both vehicles were heavily armoured to withstand an explosive blast and both were driven by a class-one police driver, trained to swerve through built-up areas at high speed.

Beside and behind the drivers sat six explosives officers, the EXPOs, still known to many as the Bomb Squad, wearing full CBRNE protective gear: black Pro-Tec helmets, ballistic goggles, boots and black charcoal-impregnated suits designed to offer some protection against chemical, biological and radiological agents. As part of the public-safety plan for the day, they had already been forward deployed to central London from their base near Euston station. Close behind them came a lorry, a large box-like vehicle known as the Beast. It contained all their heavy equipment, including the caterpillar-tracked bomb-disposal robot dubbed Felix for its nine lives.

Kate Bladon rode in the front vehicle. Twenty-nine years old, a former British Army captain in Explosive Ordnance Disposal with several tours in Afghanistan under her belt, she was now a police inspector with SO15. She had made the ‘lonely walk’ to defuse a device many times. ‘You can pull in all the
hardware you like,’ she would say to friends, ‘all the electronic counter-measures, all the remotely controlled robots, but at the end of the day it takes an operator on two legs to go in there and make a device safe.’ On the seat behind her lay a protective suit made up of more than fifty kilos of Kevlar body armour, plastic and foam, and a helmet with visor shield, her dubious defence for the task ahead. If and when they found the device, it would be Kate Bladon’s job to defuse it.

‘Pull over here!’ she commanded. ‘Beside the statue. Yes, right here.’ They pulled up abruptly beside the imposing bronze sculpture of Sir Winston Churchill on Parliament Square. With the streets already sealed off by the police for the parade, there was no other traffic. She spoke quickly into her radio, briefing the team in the vehicle behind.

‘Number two team – you deploy on foot from here with the dosimeters and and start making a sweep to get a signal. Number one team will stay with me and head to Buckingham Palace. We’ll proceed up the Mall from there and converge at the back entrance to Downing Street.’

‘And the Beast, ma’am?’ prompted an EXPO in the seat behind her.

‘The Beast stays right here. Keep the engine running.’

From a hundred metres away on Whitehall came the sound of the band playing ‘Flowers of the Forest’. The order to evacuate had not yet come through. It was 1018 hours.

Behind Kate and her team, a whirlwind of activity was spinning ever faster. In the Lambeth control room, Commander Andy Grimshaw had gone straight over to brief the Gold commander. His reaction was similar to Damian Groves’s at MI5. ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ he said. ‘So we’ve got under fifty minutes to evacuate over five thousand people from Whitehall?’

He was already thinking it through as he spoke. As an experienced counter-terrorism detective, he had been involved in countless national security exercises, many involving Special Forces, rehearsing for countless imaginary scenarios. Wembley, Twickenham,
Old Trafford, they had often planned for something big, with the shadow of the 7/7 and 21/7 bomb plots hanging over every exercise. But this, today, was of a whole different magnitude.

‘OK.’ He spoke to his Silver commander, the next level down from him. ‘We need to move the royals and the VIPs out first or they’ll be swamped in the stampede. Tell SO14 Royal Protection to get them out now. Same goes for SO1 Specialist Protection. The PM and the Cabinet need to be pulled out at the same time.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They’ve got seven minutes. Then we’re alerting the public. We stop the band and make the announcement. We’ll need to corral the public across Westminster and Lambeth Bridges. And we’ll need holding pens. Get the emergency services primed, and SO15 will tell Aldermaston what’s going on.’

The Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, better known for its design and maintenance of Britain’s Trident nuclear missile warheads, had been on high alert from the moment the COBRA committee concluded that a radiological device was heading for Britain. Its scientists, deeply immersed in the unpleasant effects of radioactive fallout, had been briefing government departments constantly. They now had people permanently embedded in Counter-terrorism Command at New Scotland Yard. As Inspector Bladon and her team raced down Birdcage Walk to begin the search from the Buckingham Palace end of St James’s Park, she called them. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I need you here now. We’re just two streets away – or we’re about to be. Grab your kit, get in a vehicle and get yourselves down to the big statue in front of Buckingham Palace and we’ll meet you there . . . What? . . . No, I’ve no idea what it’s called. It’s painted gold, that’s all. Just be there.’

At 1019 hours the band on Whitehall stopped playing. And from all around rose the sound of sirens.

WHEN THE BAND
of the Grenadier Guards stopped playing and put down their instruments halfway through Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’, those standing closest to the royals had already noticed something was up. In the last few minutes they had seen the Queen, dressed entirely in black with a double row of pearls and a florette of poppies pinned with a brooch, hurried off the stand, escorted by worried-looking plainclothes police officers in dark suits. There was no time to bring up one of the fleet of claret-coloured Bentleys or Rolls-Royce Phantoms. Instead, a pair of Range Rovers had nudged their way through the crowd, their doors had been flung open and the entire royal party had been unceremoniously bundled inside, then driven off at high speed out of London towards Windsor Castle.

It took a little longer for SO1, the Met’s Specialist Protection Group, to herd the Prime Minister and senior members of his Cabinet through the gates of Downing Street and down to the car park at the rear. From there they dispersed towards Chequers, the PM’s country retreat at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, and to two other country-house addresses outside London, known only to a very few in government. A third group, the foreign dignitaries, was rounded up by SO16, the Diplomatic Protection Group, and taken to an underground room beneath the Cabinet Office. Several heads of state protested vigorously, believing it to
be an exercise, but they got no explanations from the police, who were insistent that this was for their own safety.

Kate Bladon’s number two team reached the junction of Great George Street and Horse Guards Road on foot, only a few metres west of Parliament Square, just as all hell broke loose behind them. Police vehicles, fire engines and ambulances were converging on both entrances to Whitehall from several directions. A chief superintendent was on the raised stand, addressing the crowd through a megaphone.

‘This . . . is a civil emergency. Please move calmly towards the exits to Whitehall. Do not run. Police officers will guide you towards the exits.’ He was doing his best to remain calm but everyone in the crowd could hear the tension in his voice.

‘It’s a bomb!’ somebody screamed. ‘There’s a bomb!’

Like the spark that ignites a forest fire, the rumour spread. Somebody tripped and fell, then another, and suddenly the stampede began, as people clambered over discarded brass instruments, bearskins and drums. The troops that had stood in such perfect formation only minutes earlier joined the public in the blind rush to get off the packed street. Those at the northern end ran towards Trafalgar Square, those at the south towards Parliament Square and Westminster Abbey. Many of the carers who had patiently wheeled their ageing and infirm charges to the parade stayed with them, struggling to push them to safety as others poured past them. Several veterans were abandoned in their wheelchairs where they sat, utterly bewildered by what was going on around them. One man closed his eyes, pressed his mottled hands together and began to pray.

The Gold commander’s ambition to herd everyone calmly over the bridges to the South Bank remained just that, an ambition. There simply wasn’t time to set up barriers and cordons as hundreds poured past the police and ran blindly away from Whitehall. On Horse Guards Parade, word quickly reached the reservists and veterans waiting their turn to march. Those standing closest to
the Guards Division Memorial had seen Prince William whisked away in a Range Rover without taking the salute, and now police were appearing with megaphones ordering everyone to clear the area. The beautifully polished field gun, brought in to fire the eleven o’clock salute, lay abandoned on its chassis as police hurried everyone off the square and out onto the Mall and Birdcage Walk.

At 1035 hours Kate Bladon and her team were still in their vehicle, driving slowly up the Mall from Buckingham Palace, checking their radiation dosimeters, followed by a pair from Aldermaston, when they saw a solid wall of people streaming towards them. Their faces told of fear and panic.

‘Lock us in,’ she commanded the driver, as men and women rushed past, some stopping to bang on the doors and wave frantically at them to turn back.

At 1037 hours Kate’s radio buzzed. It was Sergeant Murray Bamford, from the second team of EXPOs, whom she had deployed on foot in Parliament Square.

‘Ma’am, we’re getting a reading,’ he told her over the radio. ‘The dosimeters are registering.’ As he spoke he was holding an FH40 digital gamma survey meter, a silver-and-black oblong box with an LED display window. The black numerals were blinking and rising as he walked.

‘It’s increasing the closer we get to Horse Guards Parade,’ he told her.

‘Right. Get there as fast as you can and meet me on the square,’ she told him, and ordered the driver to step on the accelerator, scattering the crowds still streaming away from the parade ground. In the few seconds it took to cover the remaining four hundred metres and turn the corner into Horse Guards, Kate ordered the Beast to be brought up on station from Parliament Square.

At 1039 hours Kate Bladon and her team reached the north-west corner of Horse Guards Parade to find Sergeant Bamford and his team of four already there. They were spaced at intervals of a few metres, holding their radiation dosimeters out in front of
them, like divining rods searching for underground water. As she leaped out of the armoured vehicle and joined them, she could see clearly where their sweep was leading them.

‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘Only one person goes forward from here and that’s me.’ She was facing the orange-and-white cones and the taped-off area of disturbed gravel next to the Gallipoli Memorial. The last few disabled ex-servicemen were being helped off the parade ground, hurried along by police. A helicopter was hovering directly overhead, beaming live pictures back to the Gold commander at Lambeth. The Beast was parked next to the abandoned ceremonial field gun.

At 1041 hours, Kate Bladon approached the suspect area of gravel, then stopped dead in her tracks. Her FH40 dosimeter was telling her all she needed to know. Whatever device was emitting the gamma rays was buried beneath her feet, below the surface of the parade ground. But now she faced a massive problem. If they couldn’t see what they were dealing with, there was no point in deploying the caterpillar robot: it would have nothing to make contact with. Dig it up? She looked at her watch for the umpteenth time and bit her lip. With eighteen minutes before detonation she realized she needed to refer upwards and radioed the Bronze commander at Lambeth.

‘We’re out of options,’ she told him bluntly. ‘There’s no time left to uncover the device, which could set it off if they’ve got it rigged. We have to go for attenuation. I need your OK on this one.’

‘You want to contain it? You sure you can’t make it safe? Because, strictly speaking, this has to go up to a COBRA.’

Kate Bladon respected authority and she was respected in turn by her subordinates. But at that moment, standing there in her black protective suit, metres away from a ticking dirty bomb, she lost it. ‘
Are you fucking kidding?
’ she screamed into the radio. ‘In seventeen minutes this thing is going to go off and contaminate half of central London. We need to go for mitigation – now! Do I have your permission?’

‘Wait one,’ he replied.

Kate squeezed her eyes shut in frustration and looked up to
the sky as five seconds passed, then ten. Then a different voice came over the radio.

‘Gold commander here. Do whatever you have to do to contain the blast.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Kate turned towards the Beast and gesticulated wildly for it to be brought over.

‘Get the igloo out,’ she ordered, as the lorry drew up, ‘and place it on top of that disturbed earth over there.’