capable of firing more than six thousand rounds per minute.
Pudge was being ripped to pieces. But so were all the terrorists behind the mortars on the main hatch cover. Their bodies were literally shredded right before Terry's eyes, and what was left of their corpses was blown backward over the gunwales and into the river.
There was no more glass in the wheelhouse, and Terry was very surprised he was still alive. Pudge had been built of heavy steel, including the wheelhouse, and the rounds were pinging off. Sunni shouted, 'Get her out of this fire!' For some bizarre reason, Sunni believed he could still escape the murderous hail of lead from the Thames House rooftop.
'Full astern,' Sunni screamed above the thunderous fusillade from M15. 'Back her down beneath the bridge and stay there!'
Terry looked over his shoulder. Amazingly enough, people had just stopped their cars on the bridge and gotten out to have a look. Insanity begets insanity.
He shouted, 'It is over, you rank-smelling little moron! You'll never escape now!'
'Not quite over, Captain. I have loaded three 200-pound nitrate-peroxide bombs in the hold. I'm now going to take out the Lambeth Bridge and everyone on it.'
'Timed-fuse or detonator?' Terry asked, seemingly on autopilot, having watched far more than just a few episodes of Spooks on the telly. Some part of his brain knew that if the answer was 'detonator,' he was going to ignore the bloody pistol and rip the little bastard's head off, then toss his fuckin' detonator overboard.
'Detonator,' Sunni said, and patted his shirt pocket. 'Right here in my…shit! I gave it to Rashid in case…shit!' Rashid, as they both knew, no longer existed.
At that moment, two Tornado Air Defense F3 fighter jets screamed just overhead, not twenty feet above the Lambeth Bridge and Pudge. You could see the deadly air-to-surface missiles hung in the shadows beneath their wings.
The Tornados were aircraft from the 'Protection Wing' squadron based at RAF Marham. Marham was just one of dozens of World War II RAF fighter bases scattered around London. In the air 24/7, these Air Defense fighter jets provided the capital with an almost instantaneous air-strike response to any attack on the city.
Terry knew in that instant exactly what he had to do. He shoved the throttles full astern and she started to back downriver, taking her beneath the Lambeth Bridge.
Ahead in the far distance, still at unbelievably low altitude, he saw the two F3s go to afterburners, flying away from each other in opposite directions, carving incredibly tight turns to return to the river and the target slowly backing down into the shadow of the bridge.
'Get beneath the fucking bridge,' Sunni shouted in his ear.
Sunni raced out of the wheelhouse, ran forward, and leaped down into the hold even though smoke was pouring out. Going below to hand-detonate the bombs once they were positioned directly beneath the center of the bridge, Terry thought as he reached for the throttles.
A VOICE CRACKLED in the lead pilot's headphones.
'Viper, this is Coldplay…completely cheesed, sir. No shot. Target appears stationary directly beneath the bridge…anticipate unacceptable collateral damage…'
'Affirmative. Sit tight.'
Terrence Spencer put a lock on Pudge's helm, securing the rudders in neutral position, and went to full power dead astern. Pudge's powerful engines didn't disappoint, swiftly backing her down and out from under the bridge, headed downriver backward at about five knots.
'Target moving away from the bridge…Please advise, over.'
'Thirty seconds,' Viper advised. He wanted to give the target time enough to get well away from the crowded bridge.
'Thirty seconds, that's affirmative.'
Coldplay had the target locked up. A beeping warning signal sounded inside his cockpit as he armed his missiles.
'Take it out, Coldplay. All yours.'
'Roger that.'
The lead fighter pilot's weapons were locked on to the old barge, now engulfed in flames and well beyond any danger to the bridge. He flipped the red safety up, then toggled the button that launched a single Sea Eagle air-to- surface missile from beneath his starboard wing. Almost instantly there was a muffled boom below, and Coldplay flipped his airplane left for a view of the now disintegrated target.
Just moments before the barge had erupted into a flaming ball of utter destruction, both pilots had seen a burning man race from the smoke-filled wheelhouse and leap over the gunwale into the river.
HE WAS BURNED OVER 30 percent of his body and unconscious when they pulled him from the river. The soles of his boots had been burned away, and the flesh on his feet came away in pieces. In the ambulance en route to St. Thomas Hospital, they also discovered seven bullet wounds in his arms, legs, and torso.
When Terrence Spencer awoke in his hospital bed, many hours later, the face of his missus of thirty years swam into view. She was standing over him, one small hand caressing his forehead, the other placed carefully on his bandaged chest.
'How are you feeling this fine morning, Cap'n Spencer?'
'Hello, my darlin',' he croaked, lifting his head from the pillow, his throat raw from all the damned tubes they'd jammed down it. 'Unless you're a bloody angel, I'm still alive, I see. Ain't that something?'
'They say you'll be home in a month or so. Full recovery.'
'Is that so?'
'They're calling you a hero, y'know. On the telly and in all the papers.'
'Me? A hero? Bollocks. For what?'
'For what, he says? You only got the Pudge out from under the bridge before that huge bomb in her hold blew sky-high. That's what.'
'Was a missile sunk the old Pudge. I saw it with me own eyes, I did, darlin'.'
'That's not what the RAF was saying on BBC World News last evening. They're giving you the credit for saving all those people on the bridge whether you want it or not.'
'No.'
'Yes.'
'Well, I had nothing to do with it, darlin'. It was Pudge that did it. All by herself, too. Nothing surprising about it, is there? Old girl did what she's always done, didn't she? Dunkirk? All these years?'
'And what is that?'
'She did her duty, love, the old Pudge did her sacred duty.'
FORTY-FOUR
IT WAS THE VERY FIRST DAY of school and nobody in the house was very happy about it but mom. The kids had had a wonderful summer, maybe the best ever. Swimming and rafting on the Delaware River, exploring the woods, building a tree fort that could withstand the fiercest Indian attack, catching fireflies in a jar behind the house, and not doing a single lick of homework for three whole months. They had also read three books, but only because their mother had made attendance mandatory when she read aloud every night before bedtime.
She loved reading aloud, and this summer Trevor, his little sister Margaret, and her baby girl, six-year-old Barclay, had heard her declaim Tom Sawyer, The Yearling, and Wind in the Willows, in that order. Trevor, twelve, on his own, had knocked back All Quiet on the Western Front. The nightly readings would, of course, continue on through the winter and into the spring.
But summer had fled. And now the house, her great big beautiful house on the hill, was hers and hers alone! Her husband, Jay, a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School across the river at Prince ton University, left the house every morning at six. Alice Milne had her house, and thus her life, back. Her plein air painting. Her beloved books.
