Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,85
in the distance.
The first two platforms at King’s Cross station were used exclusively by the Royal Mail. Vanloads of post came from sorting offices all over southern England and passed through a brick archway in the side of the station.
In the seconds after the bang, two dozen deafened postal workers who’d been loading the mail train on platform one were stunned to see a grey single-deck bus wedged through the archway at a sharp angle. The windscreen had shattered and two metres of metal roof had crumpled like a tin can. There was a huge hole above the arch and cracks in the masonry rising all the way up to the station roof.
Wozniak had followed every instruction Luc gave him, from the outskirts of Liverpool to the centre of London. But on the final approach to King’s Cross, he’d seen Luc standing in the aisle moving the gun up towards the main door.
The plan that came into Wozniak’s head was to brace himself, swerve up on to the narrow pavement, slam on the brakes and knock Luc flying. When the bus stopped he’d take out Luc before he was able to set fire to Lieutenant Tomaszewski, find the keys to release Tomaszewski’s cuffs and hopefully they’d be fit enough to carry the gun to the lost property office before the police reached the scene.
But it didn’t play out that way. When the front wheel mounted the pavement, Wozniak squeezed the brake, but with one wheel off the ground the braking caused the back of the bus to swing out into the opposite lane.
As the front of the bus grated against the station wall, the back sideswiped four cars parked across the street and for several alarming seconds teetered on two wheels, threatening to topple completely on to its side. This didn’t happen because the front of the bus reached the archway and got wedged in, like a toddler’s attempt to push a wooden cube through a circular hole only on a grander scale.
Luc blacked out for a couple of seconds. His back had slammed into the stair rail, which was painful but a lot less serious than if he’d missed it and gone through the windscreen.
Wozniak had smashed his nose on the steering wheel, but he was gurgling. Luc hauled himself up the side of the driver’s seat and bludgeoned him with the policeman’s truncheon.
‘Bastard,’ Luc cursed, collapsing back to the floor of the bus as he rubbed his aching back and stared down at ripped trousers and a bloody leg.
Tomaszewski posed no threat. His whole bodyweight had yanked on the handcuffs during the crash, practically wrenching his arm off as his head cracked a window and knocked him cold.
As Luc found his feet, curious postal workers inside the station were edging closer to the shattered windscreen, but looking warily at the bricks balanced precariously above the archway.
The bus’s main door was badly buckled, but the angle it was parked at meant that Luc could exit into the street. He gave it an almighty kick. The hinges were broken and the entire door slammed down on to the pavement.
The road alongside the station was only used by taxis and delivery vans. There had been no pedestrians around at the time of the crash, but onlookers were beginning to emerge from the side of the station.
Luc reached into the bus and dragged the main piece of the gun out into the road. He then went deeper inside the bus and grabbed the sack containing the gun sight and magazine. By the time he came out, there were several men arriving on the scene and they all seemed concerned.
‘You OK, son?’
‘Were you on board? Are you hurt?’
‘I think I’m fine,’ Luc said, as he pointed inside the bus. ‘But they’re not so good.’
As the men piled on to the bus, a group of postal workers was emerging from a small door in the side of the station. Some of the men stood back in awe but one of them approached Luc.
‘Why don’t you sit down on the kerb, mate?’ the man said, as he put a hand on Luc’s shoulder. ‘You look right shaken up.’
The crash had shaken Luc up, but he still had his wits about him. It wouldn’t be long before they found that Tomaszewski was handcuffed to his seat and started asking awkward questions.
‘I just want my mum,’ Luc said, trying to sound meek. ‘She works in the lost property office. She just sent me out to collect this