Slowing the Lynx down as we reach the bridge, I hover to the left, bringing us around until we are directly above the roadway leading onto the bridge; we are looking down at the first arch entry onto the bridge, with the North side tower looming behind. Bodies are piled on top of each other, the roadway at the bridge's mouth stained dark red from the litres of blood spilt onto it. The mouth itself has a hastily erected wall of sandbags across it, totally inadequate for anything more than a small attack on it, which was clearly not the case here.
My imagination sees Josh and his Company taking cover behind the sandbag wall, trying to repel the Rabids as they attacked. There would have been no retreat with the bridge’s roadway up!
“They couldn’t have defended that position for any length of time. If it was me down there, I’d have got out of there as soon as,” Dan volunteers.
“Me too, mate. But did they, and did they in time?”
In hope more than expectation, we hover higher towards the top of the bridge’s tall ornately-spired North Tower, looking for any sign that there might be somebody up there, although if there were, surely they would have taken the walkway across to the other side? We fly right around the top and hover to get the best look that we can into the walkway, but there isn’t any sign of life up there.
Out over the river, I hover the Lynx steadily and get my phone out of my pocket, asking Dan to try and raise Colonel Reed again. I have no new messages, nothing from Josh or Catherine. I have to assume that the first Lynx has landed safely, so concentrating on Josh, I try ringing him but again only get the annoyingly familiar message that it has not been possible to connect the call. Dan doesn’t have any better luck trying to raise the Colonel either.
“There is only one place that we are going to find Josh, mate, and that’s inside the Tower,” I tell Dan. “What do you think?”
“It is possible that some of his battalion are holed up in there somewhere, and it’s the only place we have left to look, Boss.”
“You saw how many hostiles are inside the walls. Do you think it’s do-able, Dan?”
“I don’t see why not, Boss. I can clear the grounds with the Mini back there before we land.” Dan seems keen.
“The Tower could be filled with them also, Dan, it’s a big risk," I say not wanting Dan to feel compelled to take that risk for a boy, not even his own flesh and blood.
"This is why we are here, Boss, we knew there would be a risk. This is the task we’ve taken on. I say we see if Josh is in there." With that, Dan pushes himself up, heading to the helicopter’s hold. "I'll prepare the Minigun; let’s do this."
The General Electric M134 Minigun is a six-barrelled rotating machine gun capable of firing between 2000 and 6000, 7.62 x 51mm rounds per minute. The awesome firepower of the gun belies its relatively compact size, making it ideal as a door gun for a smaller helicopter like the Lynx, and it’s just as effective in larger ones.
Dan pulls the hold door open on the opposite side to my pilot’s seat, sliding it back, noise and wind from the rotors comes blasting into the hold. He then rotates the Minigun out into its position, pointing out of the hold. He checks the gun over, checking its electrical power and ammo. He then straps himself into the seat mounted behind the gun, puts on his earphones and fires a small burst from the gun into the river as a test.
"Set, Boss," comes through my headset and Dan turns, giving me the thumbs-up. The look on his face is almost eager for the fight, which I completely understand and return that same look to him.
"Here we go!" I tell him.
Re-gripping the stick, I accelerate towards the second South Tower of the bridge, then swoop up and around the tower, bringing the tail around and flying back toward the Tower of London.
Chapter 17
The very short flight back over the Thames is spent trying to prepare myself for what we might find at the Tower, and I pray Josh will be alive and safe. By the way things looked from the air on our previous flyby, however, I need to prepare myself for the worst. Should we find him infected and changed, will I be capable of doing the unthinkable?
As we approach the Tower, before taking the Lynx lower to engage, I slow to scope the situation on the ground inside the walls once more, looking for the best position to mount our attack.
Ideally, I am looking for the largest concentration of Rabids so Dan can dispose of them before they can scatter. We need to get this done as fast as possible, but the grounds of the tower cover a large area with many other buildings, some of them massive, around the perimeter.
While there is no particular concentration of Rabids that I can see, Dan points to the rear of the Tower where a lot are clustered around the entrance to the Waterloo Block and the concrete concourse in front. Something must be drawing them to that block, which as the home of the Crown Jewels is highly secure, although I am sure the jewels would have been moved, probably taking priority over anyone trapped in there.
The area looks as good as any
