Echo of the Reich

53

27 July 2012

“Damn it!” shouted Bronson. “Keep looking. I’m certain it’ll have generators running inside. And the doors will probably be locked, because the weapon must be triggered by some kind of timing circuit.”

“I’ve got it,” Weeks nodded. “Bit of a bloody needle-in-a-haystack job, though. There must be hundreds of trucks here.”

That was a slight exaggeration, but there were a lot of trucks in the park.

They walked along the first double row of trucks side by side, looking at every vehicle they passed, searching for any that met the rough criteria Bronson had specified.

“Hang on a second,” Weeks said, as they reached the end of the row. “All these lorries are parked in a kind of herringbone pattern.”

“Yes.” Bronson nodded. “So what?”

“So if that bloke Georg was telling the truth, and the truck only arrived today, it’s probably been parked in one of the spaces off the central avenue. It can’t be in any of these other rows because those vehicles are boxed in by the trucks behind them.”

“Bloody good thinking, Dickie,” Bronson said.

They jogged over to the center of the truck parking area and started heading back the way they had come, checking the vehicles on both sides of them as they did so. They had almost walked back as far as the closed entrance gates before either of them saw anything that looked like a possibility.

And then it wasn’t something they saw, but rather something they heard.

Bronson stopped short and raised his hand. Even over the all-pervading noise of the crowds of people that surrounded the Media Center, he’d heard something distinctive: a deep rumble, overlaid with a higher-pitched mechanical noise, like a small petrol engine running at constant power. He turned his head to the left and right, trying to identify the source of the noise.

On the opposite side of the open central avenue was yet another of the heavy trucks, an articulated unit, the sides bearing logos that identified the vehicle as belonging to Karel TV in the Czech Republic, and a quick glance at the registration plate confirmed the truck’s origin.

“Dickie,” Bronson called, pointing across to the truck and starting to move. “Over there.”

Weeks trotted across the tarmac, following Bronson.

“You reckon this is it?”

“Maybe. There’s an engine of some sort running in this truck,” Bronson said as he stopped beside the truck and looked at it critically. “And there are closed padlocks on all the doors. You wouldn’t normally leave a generator running and then lock up the vehicle. This could be the one.”

“I thought you said it would be an Israeli truck?”

“I did. And I got it wrong, okay? I suppose the Israelis would have sent their trucks by ship. It’s only just dawned on me.”

“Right, then. Let’s get inside it and find out.”

They had no bolt-cutters to remove the padlocks, but Bronson thought a nine-millimeter bullet or two would be just as effective.

He stepped forward, drew his Walther and aimed the pistol at the padlock that secured the side door of the truck. He fired at virtually point-blank range at the body of the padlock, which simply blew apart under the massive impact.

But before Bronson could do anything else, he heard the sound of another shot, very close by, and turned quickly to see Weeks tumbling backward, the MP5 dropping from his grasp. And at the rear of the truck, a man wearing overalls was taking aim at Bronson with his pistol.

Instinctively, Bronson dropped the Walther, and dived sideways, rolling across the ground while simultaneously bringing his Heckler amp; Koch up to the aim.

The man fired twice, both shots cracking through the air somewhere above Bronson.

Then Bronson opened up with the MP5, a double tap followed by another. At least one of the bullets hit the man in the stomach, and he screamed as he fell to the floor, his weapon dropping to the ground.

Bronson glanced over at Weeks, who lay unmoving on his back a few feet away. Then he ran across to the injured man and seized his weapon. The man was whimpering with pain, but there was nothing Bronson could do for him, or for Weeks. His first priority had to be disarming the Bell.

He presumed the injured man was one of Marcus’s men, left to guard the vehicle and ensure that nobody interfered with the countdown to the triggering of the weapon.

The noise of the shots had reverberated from the sides of the vehicles parked all around, and the sound made by a submachine gun firing is very distinctive. Bronson knew that he’d soon be surrounded by armed police officers. He had to confirm that this actually was the truck containing the weapon as quickly as he could because if he’d gotten it wrong it would be too late. The opening ceremony would be starting in less than five minutes.

He glanced behind him: a uniformed police officer was running from the compound. The alarm had already been raised, and within minutes the area would be swarming with police. Time was running out.

He took another glance around him, just in case there were any other armed men lurking in wait, then strode back to the side door of the truck, pulled it open and climbed inside, holstering his pistol as he did so.

It was immediately obvious that this vehicle was very different from all the others he’d seen inside. There was no sign of any recording equipment or the spare parts and cables and lights and microphones Bronson had glimpsed in other vehicles. All that was in it were three large petrol-powered generators in locked steel cages, their motors running, exhaust pipes running up to the roof, and armored power cables vanishing beneath the floor of the truck. Beyond them, the rest of the truck was blocked off by a steel partition with a single door set into it. The door was also made of steel and protected by a combination lock.

Set into the partition was what looked like a viewing panel, a slab of heavy glass secured inside a steel frame. Bronson walked across to it and peered into the second compartment.

He’d never seen anything like it.

In the center of the hidden space was an object that looked remarkably like a bell, mounted on a steel framework. It was about five feet tall and perhaps three feet in diameter, made of some kind of metal that appeared bluish in color in the dim light. From the base of the object, a mass of cables extended vertically downward, disappearing below the floor.

On one side of the truck was a control panel, further armored cables snaking from it under the floor and presumably connected to the object that lay behind the steel partition.

He’d found the weapon, but Bronson had not the slightest idea how to disarm it, or even how to get inside the locked inner compartment.

He pulled out his mobile phone, dialed 999 and told the operator who and where he was and that he needed a bomb-disposal expert there, fast.

In the background he could hear the scream of sirens, and a few moments later distorted and amplified voices as officials apparently tried to initiate an orderly evacuation of the area. That was far too quick to be in response to his call, and he guessed it was because of the shooting a few minutes earlier.

Bronson ignored the noises outside as he struggled to make sense of the control panel, trying to work out what the various cables did, but his efforts were hampered by his lack of knowledge about the type of weapon he was dealing with. And, of course, by the fact that he knew almost nothing about bomb-disposal tactics.

The only thing he could tell for sure was that there was some kind of timing circuit incorporated into the control panel, because right in the center of the instrumentation was a digital counter, which was ticking off the seconds. At that moment, the number stood at one hundred and ninety-one-just over three minutes. He pressed buttons, but nothing happened. Then he spotted a keyhole on one corner of the panel, which presumably locked the controls.

As he stood there, staring down, he felt a sudden waft of air, and a narrow beam of light illuminated the interior of the truck.

“It’s too late now, you know,” an unpleasantly familiar voice said, from behind him.

Bronson whirled round, his hand dropping to his Walther, but he was too late.

Marcus stood at the back of the truck, having presumably released the padlock that secured the rear doors and climbed in that way. His own pistol was pointing straight at Bronson.

Bronson knew that if he tried to draw his Walther, or reach for his MP5, he’d be dead in less than a second. At that range, Marcus couldn’t possibly miss.

“The timer’s just passed three minutes, Marcus,” he said. “I would have thought you’d be miles away by now. Or are you planning on waiting around for the bang?”

The German shook his head, then laughed shortly.

“You really don’t have the slightest idea what you’re dealing with, do you? This isn’t a bomb, you bumbling idiot. It’s something far, far worse. But luckily it’ll have no effect on me. Or on any of my men.”

That wasn’t what Bronson had expected at all.

“So what is it? And how come you’re immune?”

Marcus shook his head.

“You’ll find out. And don’t bother trying to do anything about the timer, because you can’t. Everything’s armored and protected, so unless you’ve got something like a thermic lance to cut through the cables, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. And even then, it only needs the power supply for a couple of minutes after it’s triggered, because then the reaction becomes self-sustaining. So there really is nothing you can do.”

Bronson stared at him. What the German had said made a horrible kind of sense. It looked as if the Laternentrager was indeed a kind of lineal descendant of the Nazi’s Die Glocke, miniaturized, improved and refined. That probably meant it was the worst possible kind of dirty bomb, or rather something like a rogue nuclear reactor that would spew out lethal radiation for as long as it was working, turning northeast London into a desolate wasteland that would make the area around Chernobyl seem like a paradise.

And if Marcus and his men were immune, that could mean only that they knew the type of radiation the device would produce, and had taken drugs to neutralize its effects. Bronson had a vague recollection of antiradiation drugs from his time in the army, and he recalled that iodine could be an effective treatment in some circumstances.

“I could kill you right now, I suppose,” Marcus said, “but that would just deny you a lot of suffering, so I won’t. You shot my man outside in the stomach, and he’s dying slowly and in agony, so I think it’s only fair that you should enjoy the same kind of death.”

Marcus lifted the pistol and took careful aim.