Ultimatum

Fifty-three

19.46

When the missile struck, Gina was standing against the wall at the edge of the scrum of nervous guests near the lift entrance.

She saw something bright hurtling towards them from outside the window and then, before she had time to react or properly process the information, there was a loud explosion, followed by an immense, almost deafening sound of shattering glass.

Instinctively, she threw herself to the floor. She heard a single piercing scream of panic coming from somewhere very close, which stopped as abruptly as it had begun. And then there was a deathly silence, broken only by the howling wind as it gusted in through the broken glass. Nothing moved. No one cried out.

Slowly, unsteadily, Gina got to her feet. And witnessed a scene of total devastation. There was a huge hole in one of the floor-to-ceiling window panes at the southern end of the observation deck, about twenty yards from where she was standing. A blazing fire next to it ran almost the entire width of the room, its plumes of thick black smoke slowly advancing on her like an army of ghosts. All around Gina, guests staggered to their feet, their faces white with shock. Many had deep cuts. Some were covered in blood. One young woman still had a drink in her hand as she wandered round aimlessly, seemingly oblivious to the four-inch piece of glass sticking out of her stomach, which was staining her white cocktail dress a deep red.

Gina turned away from her, too shocked even to feel nauseous, which was when she saw the five or six bodies lying close to the fire. One was in the uniform of the security guards; another had a TV camera next to him, a blackened hand resting on top of it. There was a man in a dinner suit lying on top of a woman, who may or may not have been the TV reporter Gina had seen only a couple of minutes earlier.

Gina stifled a gasp. The man in the dinner suit looked like it might be Matt.

Oh God, no. Please. Not him.

Filled with a sudden sense of urgency, she made her way through the ranks of shocked, bloodied guests, ignoring the heat from the fire and the carnage all around her. She moved aside as a large, middle-aged man stumbled towards her, one cheek literally hanging off his face, blood gushing from the wound, his mouth gaping open. She didn’t even look at him. She was too busy staring through the thickening smoke at the body of the man in the dinner suit.

It was difficult to tell but it looked like his hair was the same colour as Matt’s.

The heat from the fire was becoming more intense now, and was burning her face. Behind her, people were beginning to talk again, several of them trying to take charge. Gina was only feet away now, and she could see that the woman lying beneath the man in the suit was the TV reporter. It looked like she was asleep except for the huge gash that had split open her skull, exposing the bone. The man in the suit had his face buried in her shoulder as if they were locked in an embrace.

Blinking against the smoke, Gina bent down next to him, feeling a terrible sense of dread. He wasn’t moving, and the back of his suit was shredded where the material had been torn open by hundreds of shards of glass. Gina had never seen a dead body before tonight, but even so, she could tell that he was dead. She heard herself begin to sob. To have been given a taste of hope and then, in the next instant, have it snatched away was too cruel a blow.

And then she felt a firm hand on her arm, pulling her away. She turned round to see Matt standing there, his tie askew, his lip bleeding, and a look of sheer relief on his face.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

Tina stood staring up at the flames and smoke angrily swirling out of the Shard’s windows as she listened to Bolt talking into the radio, his voice cracking with the shock of what they’d just witnessed. ‘Missile has just hit the Shard observation deck!’ he was shouting. ‘I repeat: missile has just hit the Shard observation deck! There’s a fire burning up there!’

Tina thought she could just make out figures moving behind the huge wall of glass as the fire billowed through the observation deck, obscuring the view. The sight made her guts wrench. All their efforts to stop the Stinger had been in vain. Had it been fired at eight p.m., on the deadline the terrorists had given them, they might have prevented the attack, but by launching it a quarter of an hour early, the terrorists had shown a breathtaking callousness. Tina felt gutted and galvanized at the same time. Because they could still catch the perpetrator if they moved fast enough, although the smoke trail from the Stinger that would lead them to him was already dissipating above the rooftops around them.

She jumped back in the car, slamming the door shut. ‘Drive! We need to catch the bastard!’

For a moment, Bolt didn’t say anything. He looked utterly shell-shocked. Tina had never seen him like this before.

She grabbed his arm and physically shook him, fully prepared to kick him out of the car and drive herself. ‘Mike, drive, for Christ’s sake! We can still find the shooter!’

‘All right! All right!’ he shouted back, snapping out of his trance. ‘But for once, do not do anything stupid, understand?’

‘Just fucking go!’

Giving her a glare of intense anger, he yanked the car into gear and accelerated down the street.