Flash Flood (19 page)

Bel had been listening, her sharp chin resting on a folded arm. Now she sat up. ‘So if one transistor fails somewhere – in the satellite or in the sub or at your end – we’ve got an international crisis. That’s great.’

‘Dr Kelland,’ said the woman in the severe suit, ‘there are a million failsafes in our systems. And I’d like to remind you this is classified information and—’

Bel shook her head, her pale blue eyes narrowed as she interrupted her. ‘Don’t you get it? One day it will
fail. This flood has caused a million tiny bits of chaos today. Only one of them has to get out of control and who knows what might happen?’

General Chambers stood up and cut the video link. The screen went blank. ‘We’ve done our bit. I think we can just leave them to it,’ he told the Chief Commissioner.

Dorek took the Puma down low. Meena, resting her head against the window, saw fields rush up towards her, then a small town, its buildings and streets completely dark. Traffic crept along its roads like ants. Dorek took them in a quick circle, the Puma tilting at forty-five degrees, then rose nearly vertically.

Meena held onto her stomach. ‘Dorek, do we have to do this? You’re flying like a demented bee.’

‘It’s a search pattern,’ he told her.

Meena leaned her head against the window again. Headphones snaked out from under her green helmet. Her mobile had a radio and she had found a programme that wasn’t sending out emergency broadcasts. It was a phone-in programme in French, which she spoke fluently. It made peculiar listening.

The host was cajoling listeners to call in with their views on the topic of the day – which was the disaster in London. It seemed like the French public were letting their imaginations run riot.

‘
What will happen to the stock market? New York and Tokyo won’t have been able to do anything – the world economy will collapse. We should all be very worried about our pensions.
’

‘
The stock market will be moved out of London to Paris,
’ said another caller confidently.

Phil’s voice on the headset inside the helmet drowned out the French scaremongering for a moment. ‘Dorek, what’s that down there? Circle around that traffic jam at eleven o’clock.’

Dorek nudged the stick and the Puma dropped its nose and swooped down like a bird. Meena felt queasy as the ground loomed up fast again.

Down below, a group of cars was clustered around a junction, vying for who would move first. Some people had got out and were having an argument. Wherever you went, it seemed people always had time for road rage.

‘Just another set of broken lights,’ said Meena.
Dorek swung upwards again, leaving them behind.

In her headphones, the French listeners were exploring another rich seam of woe. ‘
London has squandered our artistic heritage. It built its art galleries and museums too close to the river. Thousands of Europe’s treasures will have been ruined. It’s like New Orleans. When that flooded, the water was raw sewage. So all those ruined paintings can’t be cleaned. They will have to be burned
.’

Meena was starting to find this irritating. This French programme seemed to be enjoying these terrible events. ‘
If this can happen to London
,’ said a deep Gallic voice, ‘
what about the Netherlands? The Netherlands should be thinking about evacuating its people. For some countries this could be the end of civilization as they know it
.’

They sped away from the traffic jam and out over open fields. Then Meena saw barbed wire fences, green military vehicles and low buildings, with people in khaki uniforms moving between them. A military base. Parked on the asphalt at the front was a helicopter.

‘That looks like our chap,’ said Phil.

The helicopter’s wings were hanging down, at rest. A figure wearing khaki plus-fours was standing beside it, under a striped golf umbrella, chatting to a couple of soldiers.

Dorek circled the Puma around in a movement that nearly had Meena depositing her breakfast out of the window. He stopped and hovered.

The figure in plus-fours tilted the umbrella back and looked up. Meena recognized him immediately: it was the Prime Minister. Beside him, getting rather wet, was his security guard; a tall, thickset guy in a suit with a bulge like a holster under his arm.

The PM gave the Puma a cheery wave.

‘
England is certainly finished
,’ said the merry people of France in Meena’s headphones.

No we’re not, she thought, and pulled the cables out of her ears. She put her phone onto video mode. There was just enough battery for a few exclusive shots of the PM, safe and well and about to receive his first briefing on the rescue operation.

Ben had a torch in each hand. He switched them on and played them over the walls of the darkened stairwell. The torches were really powerful, highlighting the footprints he and Eva had left earlier. He leaned over the banister and shone them all the way down to the ground floor. It was so nice not to be creeping around dark places any more. He was warm and dry, and he had light. He felt on top of the world.

They were on the fourth floor, where Eva was trying to find a toilet that wasn’t too disgusting.

Down below in the stairwell, Ben heard a bang and
a scrape. Then voices. There were people moving about on one of the floors below.

Eva came up behind him, zipping up her drysuit. ‘What was that?’

‘I don’t know.’ He went down the steps a little way and shone the lights down. ‘Hello?’

‘Probably someone else getting warm gear,’ said Eva. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

As they started down the stairs, they saw that the swing door to the diving department was propped open with a scuba tank on a black harness. A man in a rubberized drysuit came out carrying another tank and put it down on the tiled floor.

Ben stopped and turned the torches off. Eva bumped into him.

‘What?’ she said loudly.

‘Ssh,’ Ben whispered. ‘I’ve seen those guys before. They were looting in Piccadilly just before you found me. They’re not nice.’

In the light from the window, he realized that Eva’s expression looked angry. ‘They saw you like that and they didn’t help you?’

Ben watched the man go back in before replying.
‘They thought I was drunk. And they were trying to smash their way into a jeweller’s.’

Eva stared after the man.

Ben didn’t like the look on her face. He took a pinch of her wetsuit to pull her down the stairs.

She followed reluctantly, still brooding about his story. ‘You don’t leave someone who’s got hypothermia.’

‘Look,’ whispered Ben, ‘that’s not as bad as the guy who locked me in a cellar that was filling with water. It’s just been one of those days. Come on – if we’re quick they won’t see us.’

Carefully they went down the staircase. Once they were past Eva looked back at the tanks.

‘What do they want those for?’

Ben shrugged. ‘I guess there’s some more jewellery they couldn’t get. Maybe they’re planning to dive for it.’

Eva spun on her heel and skipped back up the steps. She bent over the tank and twisted a valve. There was a hiss as gas began to escape.

Ben sprinted back up after her. ‘What are you doing?’ He put his hand on the tap and tried to
close it. ‘You can’t do that. Someone might get hurt.’

‘They left you in a state where you could have died. I’m going to make sure they find it difficult to get away with any more booty.’ She turned the tap to open again. This time she kept her hand on the valve so he couldn’t close it again.

Ben took hold of her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Stop it. What if they’re using these to help with a rescue?’ Eva put her hand out to grab the banisters and the air tank rolled towards the top step.

Ben tried to grab the harness but he missed, and it rolled easily, bouncing down the tiled steps with a loud metallic clang.

A figure appeared in the doorway, a sledgehammer raised above his head. Ben saw it descending towards him and rolled out of the way, knocking the other air tank over.

As he did so, the regulator snapped off the top, which released the pressure through the tiny hole – and turned the heavy metal air tank into a rocket.

Ben ducked just in time. The tank torpedoed past his ear and carried on through the thick wooden banisters, smashing a hole and hissing loudly. It
ploughed into the wall and veered off, splintering wood and shattering glass.

Ben was crouched against the wall, his head cradled in his arms. He opened one eye and looked down.

He couldn’t see Eva, but he noticed a deep dent in the wall, as though a car had crashed into it. Plaster and brickwork crumbled down into the stairwell. The other tank sat hissing and spinning in a circle on the half landing below. Eva must have succeeded in loosening the regulator.

Suddenly Ben’s head was crushed in a painful grip. ‘You little twerp. What do you think you are, some kind of crimefighter?’

Ben twisted his head round and saw the looter reaching for the sledgehammer. He kicked it out of the way and knocked the looter over. The two of them crashed down the stairs – down towards the other tank.

‘Ben!’ yelled Eva’s voice. ‘Get away from it!’

Oh, that’s brilliant, thought Ben. How exactly do I do that? He caught sight of the man’s partner in the doorway, keeping his distance.

The looter had him around the throat. He tried to
pull away but the man’s grip was strong. The tank spun in a circle, smashing into his shins and knees. The looter pushed Ben’s face closer to the whirling tank. He continued to struggle, wondering if this tank was about to go off like a rocket too? He managed to grab the banister to pull himself away, but it snapped immediately.

He could hear Eva screaming: ‘Get off him, get off him!’ She was down below him. How had she managed to get down there when he had ended up grappling on the landing?

The looter lost his grip on Ben’s collar and grabbed at his head. Ben wrenched himself free, leaving his neoprene cap behind. The whirling cylinder was still spinning round between them. The looter kicked out at it and Ben flattened himself against the wall as it clattered past him.

A sound from below made the whole group freeze. A voice talking over a radio.

‘Do you copy?’

‘Possible intruder action,’ came the reply. ‘Proceeding with caution.’

There were footsteps coming up the stairs. Torches
played over the walls and between the banisters.

The looters looked at each other in horror. They forgot about Ben and Eva and scrambled up the stairs again. Something glittery slid out of the man’s pocket and caught on the edge of the banisters for a moment, then slithered into the blackness.

The footsteps stopped. There was a scraping noise as something was picked up off the floor. ‘Sir, we’ve got what looks like a very valuable necklace here. There are looters in the store.’

There was a loud crack. It was the kind of noise that not many people hear in real life, but when they do they know exactly what it means. It was followed by a smell of smoke and gunpowder, like a firework going off.

They had just been shot at.

Eva hared up the steps towards Ben, who immediately caught her panic. He followed her through a pair of fire doors, barely thinking, taken over by an instinct to run.

Whoever the soldiers caught first they would assume had stolen the necklace. And technically Eva and Ben were looters because they had taken things from the store, even though it was for survival.

They were running for their lives. They pushed past racks of skimpy gym clothes and trainers. At least they gave them some cover. The looters had disappeared.

In front of them they saw a window. It suddenly shattered and they heard a shot from behind.

If they carried on rushing around like this, they would just run into more trouble. Ben needed to think.

He spotted a rack of black rugby gear and rugger-tackled Eva into it. In their black drysuits they blended in, and they watched the soldiers hurrying past, shouting, pushing racks of clothes aside with the muzzles of their guns. The three of them passed close to where Eva and Ben lay huddled, and headed off towards the cash desk and some changing rooms.

Ben waited until they were out of sight, then pulled Eva up. There was a fire exit opposite him. He fell on the door and pushed the bar open.

They ran down the stairs; Ben’s brain was racing even faster than his feet. They had to be quick, now that they were out in the open again. Down one flight he saw the entrance for the country clothing section, just as the soldiers entered the top of the stairwell.

Ben grabbed Eva and tore off her hood. He threw it further down the steps, so that the soldiers would think they had just carried straight on down. She
stopped and looked at him, her hair springing out in tight corkscrew curls, her eyes wide with the sheer panic of the chase. So that’s what it’s like to scalp a Teletubby, thought Ben, and dragged her into the country clothing department.

They ran past racks of tweed and Barbours. Ben saw another fire exit and ran for it. Down another flight of stairs and they shouldered open another door, and found themselves out in the street.