Invasion (15 page)

Of course, the darkness held its own dangers; any friendlies out there would have little or no time to react before they realised that the dark-skinned man with the flak vest and assault rifle was actually a British intelligence operative rather than a terrorist, but it was a chance he’d have to take. So what the hell was going on out there?
Khan shivered involuntarily. Was this happening elsewhere around the city? And what about the rest of the country? There would be a lot of terrified people out there tonight and the emergency services would be completely overwhelmed.

Fleetingly, he thought about Salma, the bright, attractive legal secretary he’d met a few weeks ago on a rare day off. Things had been going well, and they’d enjoyed a few dates together. She lived near Brick Lane in an outrageously priced one-bedroom apartment, where Khan had spent the odd night sleeping on the couch. Salma was not one to rush things and Khan respected her for that. Besides, he didn’t want to blow his chances.

He wondered where she was right now. If she was still at work she’d be able to see the fires from her office in the city. Khan tried to remember what floor she worked on. The forty-second, that was it, although he got the impression that the height bothered her. Or maybe she was already at home, watching it all on the news. He hoped so.

Khan had told her he was a civil servant working for a dreary government department in Whitehall, a well-paid but uninteresting position, prompting no further curiosity on her part. How would she react if she saw him now, holed up in an empty shop with an automatic
rifle across his lap? For the first time since he got out of bed that morning, Khan managed a thin smile.

She’d probably have a fit.

At that precise moment, Salma Nawaz was fighting for her own life. She pushed and clawed to no avail against the unyielding
mass of shouting and screaming bodies that had her pinned against the floor-to-ceiling window on the forty-second floor of the Hanson building. As she twisted her neck and looked out across the city, the chaos on the streets below only heightened her terror.

At
six
pm, Salma had been working in the datacentre, one floor down from her desk at Lewison
, B
utler and Partners, the prestigious city law firm where she worked. She’d been sitting in front of the large display screen, dragging and dropping electronic documents around the company’s file structure, when she heard a deep boom and the floor shook beneath her two inch black
heels
. Then, all the lights in the room went out and the display in front of her died. A wave of panic gripped her and she’d stumbled
out into the corridor, where the emergency lights had flicked on. She made her way up the fire escape stairs, emerging onto the forty-second floor, where the first thing she noticed was that all the desks were empty and every computer screen
was lifeless. The power must be out up here too, she realised.

She heard loud voices, then shouting. Salma thought she recognised some of the voices, but they sounded different, shriller and high-pitched. There was a commotion coming from the other side of the large, open-plan office. She walked quickly between the desks, seeing most of her colleagues
crowded against the east-facing windows. What
on earth were they looking at?

Salma didn’t like to get too close to the windows. Heights scared her, although she didn’t mention that in her interview and had struggled to keep it a secret since she’d been at Lewison-Butler. Sometimes, whenever something of interest was happening outside, people would loiter near the windows to watch, particularly if it was a lightning storm or a light show over at the Dome. Salma always stayed on the periphery, away from the windows. She imagined that the slightest pressure against them would make the glass crack and break. Irrational, of course, because during her building induction she’d
been told the windows could withstand squillions of pounds of pressure and the glass was
coated with super-strength epoxy something-or-other, but none of that was any consolation to Salma. The only statistic she remembered
was that here, on the forty-second floor, she was standing five hundred and forty-six feet above the streets of London. And that thought alone made her feel sick.

Against her better judgement, Salma made her way towards the windows. There were maybe sixty or seventy people gathered there, nearly everyone in the office, looking out over East London. Everyone seemed to be shouting and pointing. What on earth was going on? She saw several others break away from the crowd and bolt for the staircase. The first pangs of real fear began to gnaw at Salma then, but curiosity was the stronger emotion. She climbed onto a desk and stood up, looking out over the heads of the crowd. The scream rose in her throat and she stifled it with a fist.

Above the urban sprawl to the east, a giant airliner circled the sky, two of its engines ablaze and trailing black smoke. Salma watched in horrified fascination as the aircraft turned slowly towards them. She suddenly recalled the attacks on the World Trade Centre, many years ago. She hadn’t even been born then, but the footage
she’d seen had always chilled her, the images of those plunging to their deaths, the crowds below watching, unable to help. She’d imagined herself there, trapped on a shattered window ledge a thousand feet above the ground, a curtain of smoke and flames behind her, those around her screaming, crying. Jumping.

More people broke away from the crowd and bolted for the lobby, but Salma found herself rooted to the spot, transfixed,
as the crippled aircraft lumbered around the sky. She jumped off the desk and made her way to the window, drawn to the macabre spectacle. It was an Atlantic Airlines Airbus, a double-decked, five-hundred
seater. She could see it quite clearly now. It wasn’t heading directly for them, she could see that also, but it was going to be close. The pilot
seemed to be fighting for control as
the wings dipped and swayed
and the aircraft yawed from side to side. She could see that the tail fin was also damaged, the upper half shattered and blackened, trailing ribbons of twisted aluminium. The aircraft loomed closer.

One of the senior partners suddenly cannoned into her, sprinting for the lobby. She scrambled to her feet and swivelled back to the window. The aircraft was almost upon them. One moment it seemed far away, but then the office darkened
as the huge airliner filled the sky in front of the building. It thundered past the windows, slightly below her, the wing tip barely fifty feet from the glass. In its wake, the whole building shook to its foundations. Pictures sprang off the walls and everything rattled violently
as terrified
employees
clung to anything they could to steady themselves.

Salma just stood there swaying, her hands clamped over her ears
as the winged monster screamed past the building. She followed its path as it headed towards the centre of London, knowing it was going to crash. She lost sight of it as it banked to avoid another high building, the turn abnormally steep. Moments later, a towering fireball mushroomed into the air over the West End. Salma was paralysed with horror. She’d just witnessed the final, terrible moments of hundreds of people. Nausea churned her stomach and made her head spin. She staggered away from the window.

She had to get out, get away from the horror that threatened to overwhelm her. She had to get home. She was about to run to the stairs when another sound stopped her in her tracks. It was like rumbling thunder, growing louder with each passing second. Suddenly, the fire escape doors burst open and scores of people spilled out into the office, shouting and screaming, tumbling over desks and sprawling onto the carpeted floor. Then smoke started belching into the room, thick black smoke, travelling quickly across the ceiling, filling the air above them.

Salma ran down the corridor towards the kitchen. The crowd surged after her, seeking a way out, charging like a herd of panicked wildebeest. She found herself lifted off her feet and hurled forwards. Her head cracked sharply against something hard and her vision swam. She scrambled upright and fought to stay on her feet as the bodies closed in around her. Her vision blurred momentarily, but her face pressed against a smooth surface, cool and comforting
under her skin. Like glass…

Salma’s eyes regained
focus as she realised she was pinned against the kitchen window. She twisted her neck painfully to see what was going on. Down the packed corridor she saw a group of men desperately trying to block the gaps beneath the fire doors, their hands clamped over their mouths
as the smoke continued to pour into the office. Then the realisation hit her: they couldn’t get out. The fire was below, leaping up the stairwells, the building
shafts, burning, melting...

She felt herself crushed against the window
as the crowd sought refuge away from the choking curtain of smoke. She screamed with all the power in her lungs, pushing backwards with her bottom, but the pressure was too much and her voice was lost in the crowd. She was pinned against the glass, her arms above her head.

And that’s when she heard it. Above the shouting and screaming, Salma heard an audible crack. She twisted her face upwards and her blood froze. There. A small fissure had appeared at the top of the huge
glass pane and, as she watched, the jagged finger reached downwards another few centimetres. It was the plane, she thought. The near miss had rattled everything, weakened it somehow, and now everybody was herded into this tiny kitchen and the pressure against the glass was making
it crack.

Salma tried to turn her body, but she was pinned fast by the writhing mass
against her. Her chest hurt and it was getting difficult to breathe. Then
she felt it; the crack had worked its way down to her fingertips. At the top of the window frame, she could see a fine dust sprinkling down from around the surrounding concrete. The crack up there was wider, deeper, working its way past her fingers and across her cheek. With every ounce of strength she possessed, Salma tried to wriggle her way out, but the wall of bodies pressing against her had her trapped.

She watched with mounting horror as the fracture widened near the top and more concrete and plaster rained down. The man next to her suddenly became aware of the danger and shouted in alarm. Others around her joined in the sudden chorus of desperation and tried to push their way forward, shoving and punching their colleagues in front of them. They managed to make some progress and Salma felt the pressure on her body ease slightly
. B
ut it wasn’t over.

The men near the fire escape doors were suddenly engulfed in flames
as one of the doors buckled and flew inwards in a rush of boiling air. The crowd surged backwards again, desperate to escape the fire. For the damaged window, the renewed pressure proved too much.

Salma was slammed against the glass and this time she felt it move, watched in terror as the top sill was suddenly
wrenched out of its concrete housing. The window tilted outwards a few degrees and held there. Screaming filled the air. Salma felt her eyes drawn upwards. A single steel bolt seemed to be holding the frame in place and she watched in horrified fascination
as it slowly buckled under the pressure. Her life was being me
asured out by a thin metal bolt; a
s long as it holds,
she would
live. But she knew it would not – could not – hold. The tears streamed down her face and she tried desperately to push herself away from the window, but it was no use. The bolt bent to almost fifty degrees, the concrete around it fracturing and crumbling. And then it was gone.

The window
buckled outwards and fell away beneath her body. Salma Nawaz,
along with forty-four other employees, plunged five hundred and forty-six feet to their deaths.

Elsewhere across Europe, confusion
rei
g
ned
.

As in Britain, major European cities experienced widespread power outages moments before hostilities commenced. In city centres and surrounding suburbs, traffic-signalling systems suddenly failed, causing many accidents and huge jams. Subway systems, trams and trains glided to a halt, powerless. For a few moments, people reacted in a manner typical of the long-suffering
commuter. Many complained loudly about the state of the public transport system, while others merely shrugged their shoulders and took it in their stride. Some closed their eyes and settled into their seats or buried their noses in books and newspapers, resigned to the delay. Many reached for their cell phones to call friends and loved ones and were puzzled by the sudden loss of signal.

In transport control centres across the continent, worried staff frantically tapped the keypads of dead telephones and lifeless computers as, one by one, all of their control and monitoring systems shut down. Panic increased further as emergency power systems failed to kick in. After several minutes, commuters packed inside stranded carriages began to feel uneasy. For others, trapped in subway tunnels deep underground,
fear had already taken control as passengers clawed at doors, windows and each other to escape the claustrophobic blackness.

In residential suburbs across Europe, people tinkered with televisions, checked telephones and repeatedly flicked the switches of lifeless air-conditioning units and household appliances. Frustrated and confused, they joined their
neighbours
to shrug shoulders and complain light-heartedly about the sudden loss of power. The comforting routine of everyday life had suddenly been turned upside down but things would return to normal very soon, they reassured each other.

And then, without any warning at all, the chaos began.