Nick Oldham - Critical Threat

Henry whacked the sergeant’s shoulder. She turned and looked at him, her face a mask of consternation.

‘I thought this was supposed to be an empty house,’ she shouted.

Henry did not have time to get into discussion. He yelled, ‘Tell ’em to stop’ — he pointed at the officers by the door — ‘stay here and watch the door and don’t try to go in. I’m going round.’

She nodded and turned to yell some orders.

Henry ran up the road, hearing the word, ‘ Shit! ’ come through the earpiece from the officer at the backdoor.

His kit was extremely heavy, topped by the riot helmet, and he felt like he was running in slow motion. He skidded at the gable end of the terrace, then into the cobbled back alley, high brick walls either side of him and a paved drainage channel running down the centre. The three officers who had gone to the rear of the house were standing in the alley, looking through the door into the yard of number twelve, their arms raised defensively. Henry hurried towards them.

They glanced round worriedly, their faces squeezed tight by their helmets, their visors in the ‘up’ position. He stopped in his tracks behind them.

There was a dark-skinned Asian youth in the yard, pointing a handgun at the cops. He was dressed in T-shirt, jeans and trainers. Henry put him around the twenty mark. He was small, thin, with a droopy moustache and, young as he was, the old adage came into play when facing anyone armed with a weapon — he became a ‘sir’.

There was another youth behind him who Henry could not see properly.

‘Out, out,’ the first youth ordered the police, gesturing with the dangerous end of the gun, which looked heavy and of a high calibre. ‘Back, back,’ he motioned.

The officers took reluctant steps backwards.

‘I will not hesitate to use this weapon,’ the youth said, now framed in the backyard door, the second youth still obscured behind him.

‘OK, OK, that’s fine,’ Henry said over the shoulders of his officers, using soothing hand signals to attempt to calm down any sudden urge to pull the trigger. His team members continued to shuffle backwards and round him and he quickly found himself with no one standing between him and the gun-toting youth. Suddenly he was very isolated and vulnerable. He was wearing the regulation stab vest which might have given him some protection from a knife attack around his vital organs; he was under no illusion that a slug from the pistol now aimed at his chest would travel through the fabric and tear his heart and lungs to bits.

‘We are prepared to die.’

‘I know, I know,’ Henry said, finding it hard to speak. ‘But no one has to die, no one.’

‘I am prepared to take others with me,’ the youth warned, not having taken in Henry’s words.

‘That doesn’t have to be the case.’

Henry saw the lad’s eyes were wild and staring, that he could not remain still, always jumpy and jittery, dancing on the balls of his feet, the gun shaking dangerously in his hand, his finger wrapped, then unwrapped, and dithering around the trigger.

‘Come on, put the gun down.’

The youth sneered and stepped out of the doorway into the alley, giving Henry an uninterrupted view of his companion in the yard behind him.

It was a sight that made him freeze.

The second youth looked much the same as the first, same age, height and facial hair and was similarly attired — jeans, T-shirt, trainers — but there was one exception. Maybe a dozen blocks the size and thickness of large chocolate bars were strapped across his chest and waist and he was holding something that looked like a stubby pencil in his right hand. Henry knew instantly what he was looking at.

A suicide bomber.

In a backstreet in Accrington.

The first youth saw Henry’s expression change — and he smiled.

‘Yes,’ his head nodded, his eyes wide.

Behind him, the explosive-clad youth held up his right hand, showing Henry the plunger switch and the wire running from it, around his back. He had a wild glare in his eyes.

‘Get back, everyone,’ Henry shouted over his shoulder. ‘He’s got a bomb.’

They did not need telling twice and very rapidly Henry was truly on his own in the alley facing two people who didn’t care about dying or taking others with them, and there was nowhere for him to go.

The first youth waved the gun at him, holding it parallel to the ground like some hip-hop gangster in a music video. Henry half expected him to start rapping, though with the youth’s ethnic background, he was more likely to spout Bangra.

Henry was thinking fast.

It looked like these two had been disturbed in acts of preparation, meaning there could be others in the house, equally well armed. The whole street could end up being detonated if things went badly.

Neither youth was over five-six in height; both were as skinny as pipe cleaners, no muscle, no weight on them. Unarmed, Henry would have had a go at both, but just at that moment in time the scales were somewhat weighted in their favour.

‘There’s police officers at the front of the house, us here and more on the way,’ Henry said. ‘This is going nowhere,’ he added, hoping they would believe him.

The big Adam’s apple in the skinny throat of the gun-toting youth rose and fell. The gun dithered in his hand, his finger curling and curling again around the trigger. His head rocked and weaved. Sweat rolled down his face. He knew the implications of what he was doing, looked determined to go through with it.

‘Don’t do this,’ Henry said. ‘Nothing is worth this.’

‘You ignorant fool,’ the lad almost spat. He twisted his head and spoke over his shoulder, keeping one eye on Henry. ‘Has there been time?’ he asked the second youth.

‘Yes, brother.’

His head spun forward. ‘It is time.’

He raised the gun, pulling it upright. It was aimed at the centre of Henry’s chest and he knew he would not survive this. He braced himself and in his mind he kind of knew he should be telepathically letting Kate know he loved her, tell her to look after the kids — ha! They weren’t kids any longer. They were now exceptionally beautiful young women, hounded by slavering boys. Yes, a section of his mind knew that this is what should be happening — but the biggest part was shutting everything down, knowing he would be able to watch the bullet leave the end of the muzzle in slow motion, see it fly majestically across the gap like a CGI in a movie and enter his chest, then probably leave through his back whilst making a hole as big as a saucer.

Every muscle in his body tightened, from the stretched sinews in his neck to his calves.

‘Are you ready, brother?’ the youth shouted.

‘Yes …’ The explosive-bound youth raised his right hand, his thumb hovering over the button. Then he looked quickly down at the wire and Henry caught the movement of his eyes and saw what he had seen. ‘Omar!’ the lad gasped.

‘What?’ Omar responded impatiently, brow furrowed. He twisted his head to glance, his eyes momentarily off Henry … at which point, Henry knew he had to act. He had a nanosecond to do so and he pitched himself at the lad, going in low under the gun with a rugby tackle, driving his right shoulder low and hard into the lad’s midriff, flattening him and at the same time grabbing the lad’s wrist. He landed on top of him, completely taking him by surprise, slamming the gun hand down on to the hard ground with as much force as he could. The gun clattered out of his grasp. Immediately Henry reared up and delivered the hardest punch he could find, smacking him on the jaw just below his left temple, knocking him senseless. As a blow it hurt Henry’s knuckles a lot, but there was the satisfying feel of dislocation and breakage in the young man’s face.