When the two of them were at the very edge of the car park, Wilkes drew back the string on his bow and sent a thin shaft of wood straight through the Guard's heart. He dropped without a sound.
He and Tariq broke cover, racing for the small, human-sized door that sat in the middle of the plane-sized one. When they got there they stood on either side of it, ready to deal with anyone who came out. Wilkes waved to Caroline, who in turn waved to the kids and Rangers sheltering behind the concrete wall at the end of the line of planes. As per their orders, they didn't run out. Instead they walked en masse, with Green and two Rangers at their head, older kids at the front, younger ones at the back.
When they reached her, Caroline joined them at the front. The army of children walked towards the hanger, silent and full of purpose. When the whole group stood united, she, Wilkes, Tariq and Green checked their watches and began a countdown. Then Green and Wilkes broke right while Tariq and one of the other Rangers broke left, slipping around the edges of the hanger with five armed kids in tow.
Caroline took up a position beside the door, alongside a Ranger, waving the remaining kids back against the hanger doors. The snow fell silently as they stood there, breath clouding the air, waiting for the exact moment. Eventually, after ten minutes had passed, Caroline raised her right hand and counted down from five with her fingers. When the last finger made a fist, she took hold of her machine gun, stepped back from hanger door and, in tandem with the Ranger whose name she still hadn't bothered to ask, kicked it open and went in shooting.
The second they burst into the hanger Caroline realised they'd made a massive mistake. All their planning had been based on the idea that the kids would be sleeping on the cold floor of the cavernous, empty space.
But in the centre of the concrete expanse stood the biggest plane Caroline had ever seen. A guard was already running up the staircase to the door in its nose. It was the only staircase running up to the plane — the doors at the midpoint and rear of the plane were closed.
Underneath the fuselage, Caroline saw Wilkes, Tariq and their teams bursting in from the two rear doors, similarly amazed at the scale of their miscalculation.
The kids were on the fucking plane.
Caroline was closest to the moveable metal stairs and she put on a burst of speed as she registered the situation, racing to get within firing range before the guard could make it inside the plane and close the door. He had made it as far as the top step before she managed to get a bead on the man, and sent a stream of bullets thudding into him. The guard cried out, spun and toppled down the stairs, a dead weight and an obstacle.
Caroline kept running, aware of the kids streaming into the hanger in her wake.
'Don't let them close the door,' came a distant, echoing yell from Tariq.
'Well, dur,' she muttered as she raced towards the metal stairs.
As she reached the foot of the stairs she jumped over the still twitching corpse of the guard she had shot and began pounding up towards the door, which began to swing closed ahead of her. The men closing it were well protected behind its bulk, and she'd climbed only a few steps before she realised there was no chance at all of reaching the door in time, or getting a clear shot at the men who were closing it.
She dropped her gun and it swung free on its shoulder strap as she reached into the pocket of her fur coat and pulled out a grenade. She bit the pin and pulled it out with her teeth, never breaking her upwards stride as the gap between door and fuselage narrowed. She took three more steps and then stopped, drew back her arm and threw the grenade as hard as she could towards the tiny gap. It soared through the air and straight through a space merely twice its width.
The door slammed shut amidst a chorus of shouts from inside. There was a loud clang as the door lock was engaged and then immediately disengaged. The door began to swing open again, ever so slowly.
Then the grenade exploded, blowing a huge gaping hole in the side of the plane, sending the door, and various body parts, flying over Caroline's head. The shockwave picked her up and tossed her backwards off the staircase into the freezing cold air high above the concrete floor, which rushed up to greet her as she screamed.
Chapter Twenty-One
'They blew the bridge because the point where it meets the bank is their weakest spot,' said Ferguson.
I panned across with my binoculars to focus on the jagged outcrop of stone that marked the opposite side of the now destroyed Westminster Bridge. I could see immediately what he meant. At the foot of Big Ben there was a patch of open ground between the wall of the Palace and the edge of the bridge accommodating some steps that led down to a tunnel entrance. The tall black fence that ringed the Palace only came up as high as the bridge, which meant that you could get inside by laying a plank of wood across the gap and leaping in. Obviously not an option when the CCTV systems were all working, but now it seemed eminently doable.
'It's called Speaker's Green,' explained Ferguson.
'What's that tunnel entrance?' asked Jack.
'Westminster Tube. There are tunnels direct from the station into the Palace and that big building opposite it, the one with the black chimneys. That's Portcullis House where the MPs offices used to be. There's a tunnel running from there under the road into the Palace as well.'
'In which case we should go in underground, through the tube,' I said. 'They blew the bridge but they didn't blow the tunnels, did they?'
'They didn't need to,' the Ranger replied. 'Once the pumps shut down, the tube tunnels all flooded. The old rivers that run under the city reclaimed them. If we had scuba gear, maybe, but even then it'd be madness.'
'So we go in over the fence there?' asked Jack.
'It's an option, but it's the wrong end of the building,' said Ferguson. 'If we go in there we have to travel the whole length of the Palace to get where we're going, which massively increases our chances of discovery. No, our best way in is there. The Lords Library.'
He pointed to the opposite end of the Palace, to the huge tower that marked its southernmost point.
'There are only two places where the Palace backs directly onto the river, and that's the towers at either end,' he explained. 'In between there's a bloody great terrace between the wall and the river. What we have to do is get on the water, moor at the foot of that tower, and climb in one of the windows. It's our best way of getting in undetected.'
'I don't know about you, mate, but I'm not Spider-Man,' I said. 'There's no way in hell I'm going to be able to scale that wall.'
'What we need,' said Jack, 'Is one of those grappling hook gun thingys that Batman uses.'
'Nah,' said Ferguson, smiling. 'We can do better than that.'
Ten minutes later we climbed down from our vantage point through the ruined interior of St Thomas' Hospital, emerged into a street buried under a thickening carpet of snow, and set off in search of a dinghy.
'Whatever you do, don't fall in, okay?' said Ferguson unnecessarily as we climbed into the small inflatable that we'd found in a River Police station half a mile upstream. 'The water is freezing and the current is deadly. If you hit the water you're dead, simple as.'
'But we're wearing life jackets,' I pointed out.
'Don't matter,' says the Irishman. 'You probably won't be strong enough to swim to the shore. You'll stay afloat, but you'll freeze to death before you hit land.'
'I thought Irish people were cheery, optimistic types,' said Jack as he climbed carefully into the rubber boat.
'What the fuck ever gave you that idea?' asked the Ranger, untethering the boat and pushing us away from the shore.
'Um, Terry Wogan?'
Ferguson clipped his ear and handed him an oar. 'Row, you cheeky sod.'
There was no moon, but the world was clothed in white and the sky was still thick with falling snow. The current took us quickly and we floated out into the Thames.
'We can't use the engine, 'cause they'll hear us,' explained Ferguson. 'And we don't have an anchor, so the hardest thing will be to bring ourselves to a halt long enough to climb out. When I give the signal, you two need to
