Carver - By Tom Cain Page 0,67

impacting at close to the speed of sound. The tanks that each hold millions of gallons of oil and petrol are clustered in twos and threes within brick and concrete berms, designed according to safety regulations that demand they can safely contain a hundred and ten per cent of the capacity of the biggest tank. But those regulations do not account for what happens when all the tanks are breached at once, and a torrent of flaming liquid overflows those concrete defences like lava escaping a volcano. Refinery staff are trained to evacuate their workplaces quickly and safely in the event of an emergency, and await the arrival of local fire brigades. But evacuation attempts are futile when there is no place of safety; when death waits at every turn, and any attempt at rescue will be far too little, too late.

Armageddon had come to Rosconway. The air was torn asunder by a terrifying conflagration of thunderous noise, light, heat – and blasts of explosive pressure that picked up cars and trucks, sent people flying, and obliterated the mighty structures of the refinery in a series of explosions that seemed to go on and on in a never-ending wave of destruction.

The explosive shells were damaging enough in themselves. But their greater purpose was to set free the pent-up power that was locked in the refinery itself. The giant storage tanks, the distillation towers, the miles of pipes that carried a multitude of petrochemical substances around the complex: all now became locked in a deadly chain reaction as the fires of hell engulfed them.

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WILLIE HOLLOWAY HAD been trying to tell the arrogant little tit of a ministerial aide, for the umpteenth time, that safety really was an important issue at an oil refinery. He was shouting even louder than before, just to make himself heard over the hubbub of the chattering people all around them, and the whirring clatter of the incoming helicopters. Then the noise of the rotors was obliterated by a metallic crash, immediately followed by a thunderous explosion. Holloway looked up to see a single helicopter spiralling down from the sky. All that was left of the other chopper was a boiling cloud of fire and thick black smoke.

A second later one of the projectiles hit the distillation tower that rose from the ground no more than fifteen metres behind him, and the gigantic explosion that followed wiped all traces of Willie Holloway, the aide and everyone anywhere near them from the face of the earth.

Tyrrell and Schultz were about a hundred metres away, walking down the road towards the administrative blocks, where they were due to have a discreet and hopefully unobserved meeting with the Director of Special Forces. A razor-sharp shard of steel, roughly the size of a frisbee, hit Major Rod Tyrrell just above his right ear, sliced the top of his head off, and killed him instantly. Schultz was unharmed, but the sheer force of the blast picked him up and threw him to the ground. By the time he dragged himself to his feet, the air was filled with choking, billowing smoke that reeked of burning oil, and the ground shook from the relentless barrage of explosions as one refinery unit after another burst into scorching flames or blew itself to smithereens.

Holding a handkerchief to his face to give himself the most basic protection against the fumes, Schultz broke into a stumbling, coughing run as he tried to get away from the inferno. Amidst the thunder of explosions and the clouds of smoke he neither heard nor saw the stricken helicopter until it scraped over the roof of one of the office blocks just ahead of him, dislodging scores of roof-tiles as it went, crashed on to the road surface, and came skidding towards him in a screeching mass of tangled metal and shattered glass.

Schultz flung himself out of the way, somehow managing not to be shredded by the mangled blades of the helicopter rotors. The chopper kept going in the direction of the stricken, blazing distillery towers, before coming to rest by the side of the road, no more than a few metres from a ruptured pipe that was pouring some kind of burning liquid on to the ground. The petrochemical flowed across the tarmac, flaming like the brandy on a flambéed steak, creating a pool of fire that was spreading wider and wider. And the shattered helicopter was right in its way.

If anyone had managed to survive the crash