Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,66

at the glass until a great section of the window gave way.

Now he reached into the open window and pulled the curtain open. He looked in and his eyes widened as he saw the gas cylinders, arranged like giant test tubes in their metal rack. Carver knew exactly what he was looking at. He gripped the sides of the window frame, ignoring the fragments of broken glass that still clung to them, and was about to pull himself up and through the window when there was a sudden blast of blinding light, deafening noise and burning heat, and as Carver flung himself to the ground he realized that he’d been beaten.

Dave Smethurst had set the four-hour timer at 6.39 and 42 seconds, precisely. And so at 10.39 and 42 seconds an electrical signal was sent by the timer to the junction box inside the Toyota Hiace, and then on to the twelve launch tubes. Twelve igniters sparked into life, causing the ammonium nitrate to decompose, releasing a large quantity of oxygen. This reacted with the hydrogen and carbon in the icing sugar to produce an intense, barely controlled burst of energy, concentrated within the high-pressure tubes. This sudden flare of light and flame ignited the fuses at the bottom of each shell, and blasted the shells through the skin of paper stretched across the roof of the camper van and up into the clear blue sky.

Five seconds later the thirteenth fuse set off the igniter in the jerrycan of fuel that Smethurst had left inside the van. It, too, burst into flame, engulfing the interior of the vehicle and destroying any trace of fingerprints or DNA, leaving just a scorched and blackened metal shell.

Carver picked himself up from the floor of the derelict barn, momentarily deafened by the force of the explosion. He screwed up his eyes, gave his head a shake to clear it … and then sprinted desperately to his car.

50

* * *

THE CHOPPERS WERE just making their final approach to the refinery, barely five hundred metres from their destination. Their crews’ attentions were entirely concentrated on the landing ground that had been marked out for them in a field directly opposite the main gates. A reception committee of officials and media representatives had formed up there in a ragged semicircle. From her window seat, Nikki Wilkins could see the cameramen jostling for the best position and raising their lenses to the sky. As the helicopter swung round to come into land, she spotted a sudden, dazzling flash of light from the ground, away to her left. She turned her head towards it, and had just enough time to register the billowing plume of flame and smoke before something punched into the side of the helicopter and sent it staggering off course like a dazed boxer stumbling across the ring. The next thing Wilkins knew, the cabin was spinning round and round and she was screaming out in terror as the air all around her was filled with scorching flame and red-hot shards of metal.

The explosive-filled steel gas-cylinder that hit the Power Elite was bigger than the shell from a Challenger 2 battle tank. It obliterated the cockpit window, decapitated the pilot, missed the co-pilot by a whisker, and exited the far side of the helicopter, taking a mass of glass, metal, plastic and electrical wiring with it, like a through-and-through bullet tearing the flesh from its victim’s back. It did not, however, explode. There was still a tiny fraction of the fuse left unburnt, and until it triggered the detonator, the sugar/fertilizer mix would remain inert.

Its momentum somewhat slowed by its impact with the helicopter, the cylinder veered off course, flattened the arc of its trajectory, and hit the second helicopter amidships.

Now it exploded.

A millisecond later, the United Kingdom’s special forces had been left without a commanding officer, and MI5 had lost its deputy director. The fireball that consumed them had been captured live on television. But this was just the start of the catastrophe.

As the cluster of people by the landing site ran for cover from the shrapnel that fell like red-hot hail from the sky, the co-pilot of the first helicopter desperately fought for control of his craft.

And then the whole world seemed to go up in flames, as the other eleven cylinders hit their targets.

The pipes, towers and storage tanks of an oil refinery are double-skinned to prevent any leaks. But even two thin sheets of steel are no protection against an explosive shell