Alice is tending to Tim, cutting his trouser leg open and then cutting away a makeshift battlefield dressing Josh must have applied. I go over to her with a pair of scissors from a Medi Kit she has open on the seat beside Tim. She has a look of concern on her face and I can see why. It looks like a bullet has smashed through Tim’s shin bone; there is a hole at the front with bits of bone sticking through. Blood is pouring from the wound and pools onto the hold floor. Tim himself is oblivious to the state of his leg. He is out of it with his head tipped back. It’s good stuff, the morphine Alice has given him. He definitely needed it.
“Are you okay there, Alice?”
“Yes, I’ll get his leg dressed properly. That should stem the bleeding until we can get him to a doctor,” she tells me confidently.
“Good, well done, get some fluids in him too,” I advise.
“Yep, as soon as I finish here.”
I give Josh a nod and he tells Alice he will get the IV ready.
“I’ll be up front if you need me,” I tell Alice and then tell them both to get some headphones on before I go. Neither Alice nor Josh reply. They are both busy attending to Tim, so I leave them to it.
When we both have a minute, I will speak to Alice properly and thank her for backing me up in the Tower and for helping me get Josh back. I seriously doubt that would have happened without her. She acquitted herself expertly. She has immense courage and now she is tending to Tim professionally without any fuss and my estimation of her keeps rising, we have been extremely lucky to find her.
Leaving the lights of the hold and entering the dimmed cockpit, I give Dan a couple of quick friendly slaps on his arm then climb back into my seat. It feels good to take the weight off my feet, I have to admit. There is no time to relax, however; we are currently in a holding pattern back over near Tower Bridge, and Dan needs to know our next move. So I grab my headphones.
“How was it in there?" Dan asks as soon as my headphones are in place.
"It was fucking bad, mate!"
"I can imagine, but you got Josh out," Dan points out.
"It's a bloody miracle he survived, the bodies were literally piled up in there. Let me fill you in later with the details. Right now, we need to get moving, then you can tell me what Colonel Reed had to say. How are we doing for fuel?”
“Fuel is okay, what is our destination?” Dan asks.
“Good. First off, let’s take a look at the Leadenhall Building. Where Stacey’s parents are, it’s virtually on our way.”
Dan looks confused. “Which one is that?”
“The Cheesegrater building!” I tell him.
“Yep, okay,” Dan says.
Dan pulls the Lynx around and accelerates, taking us over the top of Tower Bridge between its two turrets. The dark hulk of the Cheesegrater is then in sight through the windscreen, its roof rising with the other skyscrapers that circle it. I take one last look across at Dan and out of his window at the Tower of London, the silhouette of the White Tower at the centre now a tomb.
The Cheesegrater is one of the new skyscrapers that seem to be popping up on a regular basis in London. This one is in the cluster of tall buildings in the Square Mile, the financial centre of London. The building was given its nickname for obvious reasons, suffice to say, it is very tall and has a sloping side.
The sky is now quite dark as night starts to take hold, the usual countless lights that brighten the buildings and streets having failed tonight, plunging North London into virtual darkness. Light does exist in odd windows of the occasional building, coming from unknown sources, while fires light up too many buildings and areas of the city. This is not a London I recognise; it has become a ghost city full of death and torment. Is there any hope for it?
“Colonel Reed was irate,” Dan starts, “he was banging on about the safe and your agreement with him to get it. They haven’t got anything off the computer as of yet, and he wants to know what we are going to do about getting it?"
"What did he say about the girls and Stan?" I ask Dan, ignoring the safe for now.
"He didn’t seem to know much, only that they had landed and have been moved to quarantine. He did say they were being looked after."
"We need to get to them. I don't like leaving them any longer than we have to."
"No, I know what you mean," Dan replies.
Within minutes, the Lynx is flying into the financial heart of the city, the Cheesegrater—which since completion is one of the tallest building of the cluster now rising in front of us—still seems intact. There is no light from the building, however, which at least means it doesn’t seem to be on fire. It almost looks abandoned.
In front of the Cheesegrater, smoke still rises from the Lloyds building. There are now no visible flames from it, but the famous building still smoulders away to itself.
I reach and switch on the Lynx's spotlights, and immediately they throw a wide beam into the sky in front of us and light up a portion of the building, but reveal nothing of interest.
“Let’s circle around it a couple of times. I told Stacey to tell her parents we would if she spoke to them, so they would know it's us,” I tell Dan.
Dan breaks the Lynx right, flying over the smaller towers and in between the skyscrapers as he takes us around. The Gherkin looms to the side on our right and
