Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

And before she had a chance to say another word to him, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

19.45

On the roof half a mile away, Voorhess slipped on a pair of earphones, having finished his inspection of the Stinger. Then he inserted the battery coolant unit into the launcher’s hand guard, shooting a stream of argon gas into the system, along with a chemical energy charge that gave the missile the power it needed to reach its target.

It was now ready to fire.

Getting down on one knee, with his back to the southern edge of the roof to allow for backdraft, and camouflaged by all the pot plants, he rested the missile on his shoulder and slowly lifted the launcher until it was pointed at the lights on the main observation deck of the Shard, sixty-nine storeys up. It really was a beautiful building, thought Voorhess, who’d always had an admiration for original architecture, and it seemed a pity to put a hole in it. But he comforted himself in the knowledge that the physical damage would be cleared up soon enough, leaving it looking as good as new in no time. Those inside weren’t going to be so lucky, though. The three-kilo warhead on the end of the missile would wreak havoc in the enclosed, crowded space, and the beauty of the whole thing was that he couldn’t miss. Unlike the helicopter he’d shot down, this wasn’t a moving target, and as the only real heat source in the whole building, and with no other heat sources in the immediate vicinity, the missile would lock straight on to it.

The observation deck was now in the launcher’s sights. He couldn’t see inside and had no idea who was in there, but this no longer concerned him. His target was the building. Right then, it was all he was interested in.

For a long moment he paused for reflection, knowing that what he was about to do would be seen and talked about all over the world. A satisfied smile passed across his face as he pressed his finger down on the trigger mechanism and, with an angry shriek, the missile took flight.

They’d just turned off Long Lane and on to a residential road, having just split from the two ARVs to maximize the ground they could cover in the hunt for the Shogun, when Tina heard a high-pitched whoosh — the sound rockets made when they were shot up into the air in firework displays — and saw a thin plume of smoke shoot across the top of buildings no more than two hundred yards to the south-west.

She opened her mouth to say something, her eyes fixed to the missile as it seemed to sit perfectly still in the air for a half a heartbeat before suddenly accelerating upwards, leaving a long, perfectly straight vapour trail like an arrow pointed straight at the Shard.

As Bolt did an emergency stop, Tina jumped out of the car and watched, dumbstruck, as the missile raced towards its target. It seemed to travel for a long time, but in reality it must have been barely seconds. And then it struck the observation deck with an audible bang, followed by a flash of bright light.

They’d been too late.

19.46

When the missile struck, Gina was standing against the wall at the edge of the scrum of nervous guests near the lift entrance.

She saw something bright hurtling towards them from outside the window and then, before she had time to react or properly process the information, there was a loud explosion, followed by an immense, almost deafening sound of shattering glass.

Instinctively, she threw herself to the floor. She heard a single piercing scream of panic coming from somewhere very close, which stopped as abruptly as it had begun. And then there was a deathly silence, broken only by the howling wind as it gusted in through the broken glass. Nothing moved. No one cried out.

Slowly, unsteadily, Gina got to her feet. And witnessed a scene of total devastation. There was a huge hole in one of the floor-to-ceiling window panes at the southern end of the observation deck, about twenty yards from where she was standing. A blazing fire next to it ran almost the entire width of the room, its plumes of thick black smoke slowly advancing on her like an army of ghosts. All around Gina, guests staggered to their feet, their faces white with shock. Many had deep cuts. Some were covered in blood. One young woman still had a drink in her hand as she wandered round aimlessly, seemingly oblivious to the four-inch piece of glass sticking out of her stomach, which was staining her white cocktail dress a deep red.

Gina turned away from her, too shocked even to feel nauseous, which was when she saw the five or six bodies lying close to the fire. One was in the uniform of the security guards; another had a TV camera next to him, a blackened hand resting on top of it. There was a man in a dinner suit lying on top of a woman, who may or may not have been the TV reporter Gina had seen only a couple of minutes earlier.

Gina stifled a gasp. The man in the dinner suit looked like it might be Matt.

Oh God, no. Please. Not him .

Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, she made her way through the ranks of shocked, bloodied guests, ignoring the heat from the fire and the carnage all around her. She moved aside as a large, middle-aged man stumbled towards her, one cheek literally hanging off his face, blood gushing from the wound, his mouth gaping open. She didn’t even look at him. She was too busy staring through the thickening smoke at the body of the man in the dinner suit.

It was difficult to tell but it looked like his hair was the same colour as Matt’s.

The heat from the fire was becoming more intense now, and was burning her face. Behind her, people were beginning to talk again, several of them trying to take charge. Gina was only feet away now, and she could see that the woman lying beneath the man in the suit was the TV reporter. It looked like she was asleep except for the huge gash that had split open her skull, exposing the bone. The man in the suit had his face buried in her shoulder as if they were locked in an embrace.

Blinking against the smoke, Gina bent down next to him, feeling a terrible sense of dread. He wasn’t moving, and the back of his suit was shredded where the material had been torn open by hundreds of shards of glass. Gina had never seen a dead body before tonight, but even so, she could tell that he was dead. She heard herself begin to sob. To have been given a taste of hope and then, in the next instant, have it snatched away was too cruel a blow.

And then she felt a firm hand on her arm, pulling her away. She turned round to see Matt standing there, his tie askew, his lip bleeding, and a look of sheer relief on his face.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Tina stood staring up at the flames and smoke angrily swirling out of the Shard’s windows as she listened to Bolt talking into the radio, his voice cracking with the shock of what they’d just witnessed. ‘Missile has just hit the Shard observation deck!’ he was shouting. ‘I repeat: missile has just hit the Shard observation deck! There’s a fire burning up there!’

Tina thought she could just make out figures moving behind the huge wall of glass as the fire billowed through the observation deck, obscuring the view. The sight made her guts wrench. All their efforts to stop the Stinger had been in vain. Had it been fired at eight p.m., on the deadline the terrorists had given them, they might have prevented the attack, but by launching it a quarter of an hour early, the terrorists had shown a breathtaking callousness. Tina felt gutted and galvanized at the same time. Because they could still catch the perpetrator if they moved fast enough, although the smoke trail from the Stinger that would lead them to him was already dissipating above the rooftops around them.