'Okay,' I said. 'We're going after them, through that hole in the wall. Green and I will take point, Jack you follow close behind and take care of Jane.'
'I don't need taking care of, Lee,' she said, momentarily indignant.
I stepped forward and kissed her nose. 'Don't be daft. You've got a fucking hole in your foot.'
I raised my gun to my shoulder and moved to one side of the hole in the wall. Green came up close behind me.
'You ready for this, mate?' I said, still unaccustomed to seeing him with a gun in his hand.
'Fuck yes,' he said resolutely, which was good enough for me.
I lifted my hand and counted down from three then slipped sideways through the wall into the House of Commons Library tower, gun high, ready for anything.
Caroline heard the shooting and the explosions and became frantic. The attack was going ahead after all. They were supposed to be part of it, trapping the bad guys between two pincers and bottling them in. If there was only one wave of attackers, the soldiers would be able to dig in, fight back or escape. There'd be no-one to outflank them.
She began banging on the committee room door and yelling: 'We're in here!'
A boy grabbed her shoulder from behind. 'What are you doing? Are you trying to get us all killed?'
She swatted him away and kept banging on the door.
'Shut the fuck up!' came a yell from outside. That must be the guard.
'Come in here and make me, dipshit!' she yelled back. Then she turned to the assembled throng behind her and said: 'When he opens the door we charge him. There are way too many of us for him to hold off, okay?'
A few children began fighting their way to the back of the crowd, scared now that things had come to a head. But the majority stood ready, nodding and squaring up, ready to run.
Caroline kept yelling until she was cut off by a burst of machine gun fire right outside the door. Something hard slammed into the door and she heard it fall to the ground. Was that the guard?
Moments later the key turned in the lock. Caroline held up her hand to hold the children back, telling them to wait for the right moment.
The door swung open and there, standing over the guard's corpse, were fifteen young women carrying machine guns.
'You lot ready to fight?' asked the woman at the front.
There was a brief pause then the children yelled en masse and poured out of the room looking for something, anything — anyone — to destroy.
The riot had begun.
Wilkes acted on instinct. He had no clue where they might have stashed Ferguson, but he figured it would somewhere underground. He didn't know why, exactly, it just seemed appropriate; you didn't torture people in daylight, it was a dark, subterranean activity.
So he ran through the building, hearing gunfights all around him and a huge screaming furore to his right that sounded like the scariest borstal in the world at playtime, until he found a staircase to run down.
The gun felt odd in his hand. The boss had strict rules about firearms and even though he knew that he would be mad to toss it aside, it felt wrong to be carrying it. Just before he found the staircase he ran past a huge glass case mounted on the wall and stopped to gaze in wonder. Ranged within the display case were five beautiful shiny swords. The plaque underneath read 'Lieutenancy swords'. They must have been used for ceremonial events, like the opening of Parliament. He doubted they were sharp, but he smashed the glass with his elbow and reverently lifted down the big central blade. Its hilt fitted his hand like a glove and the elaborate silver designs that protected the swordsman's hand glittered in the light. He knew the names of each individual metal curlicue like a litany — contre-guard, anneau, pas d'ane, quillon, ecusson. He smiled as he felt the weight of the sword against his palm.
He shoved the gun into his pocket — no point throwing it away just yet — grabbed a second sword, and ran down the stairs, a blade in each hand. Cold steel, he decided, felt much better than a firearm.
The cellars were a maze of tiny winding passageways, and Wilkes checked each door, finding pokey offices, store rooms, and finally a bar. The door opened from the inside just as he was reaching for the handle, so he stepped back and raised the blades. One of Cooper's men stood in the doorway, weapon raised, but the sight of a man with two swords took him by surprise. That instant of confusion was all Wilkes needed. He lunged forward, both swords level, and felt both the steel blades slide through the man's clothing and body smoothly and with little resistance.
So they were sharp after all.
The guard went rigid and the machine gun fell from his hands. The two swords were the only thing keeping him upright as blood poured from his mouth and his eyes rolled back in head.
Wilkes executed a perfectly poised fencing retreat, withdrawing the swords in one fluid motion, letting his skewered opponent crash to the floor, then he leapt over the body into the bar.
Here he found Ferguson tied to a chair, his face a mass of bruise and blood, stripped of his shirt, his chest a dot-to-dot of cigarette burns.
He cut through the plastic ties on the ruined Ranger's hands and knelt down so they were face to face, hoping against hope that his friend had not been broken by his ordeal.
Ferguson looked up, swollen eyes full of fury. He asked for water, his voice a faint whisper. Wilkes found a pitcher of water on the bar and gave it to him. Ferguson gulped it down then stood, a trifle unsteadily. He held out his hand and Wilkes passed him his shirt and hoodie. Ferguson dressed himself carefully then looked down at the dead body of his tormentor, machine gun laying beside him ready for use.
Ferguson looked up and held out his hand.
'Sword,' he said.
Green and I advanced through the wreckage of the Commons Library. Jane and Jack hobbled after us, covering our rear and sides.
'Remember,' I said quietly as we picked our way across the rubble, 'his core team were SAS. They know more about close quarter combat than all of us put together. Our only hope is to contain them, pen them in, give them nowhere to run. If this turns into a running fight, they'll pick us off easy.'
The explosion had set fires in the old wooden building. Already flames were licking at the bookcases that lined the walls. Huge, heavy, leather bound copies of Hansard began to smoulder.
'This place,' said Green, 'is going to go up like a candle. We don't need to follow them in there, Lee. We can just stay outside and wait. The fire will force them out.'
I looked down the long corridor ahead of me — a shooting gallery if ever I saw one — then back to the burning room. He was right.
'Back outside, now,' I yelled, and we retreated to Speaker's Green. Burning pages began to rain down from the walls as we backtracked.
'We need to think this through,' I said, turning to Jane. 'Do you think he'll stand and fight or run for it?'
'Fight,' she said firmly.
'Good, then what we have to do…'
My voice was drowned out by a roar somewhere off to our left. I glanced at the others in confusion then ran through the snow, underneath Big Ben and into the yard. A tide of children was pouring up out of the underground car park. At their head ran Caroline, a machine gun in her hands. The women from the Lords brought up the rear, yelping and whooping and firing in the air.
I tried to wave them down, to prevent them hurtling headlong into the Palace, but there was no stopping them. This wasn't an army, this was a mob and God help anyone who got in their way.
Caroline ran over to me as the mob streamed into the building, screaming and yelling and tearing the place apart, every one of them carrying a club, chain or gun.
'Not quite how we planned it,' she said to me, panting and excited. 'They left all our weapons in a pile in the car park, so we just collected them.'
'We need to come up with a strategy for this, some plan…'
