When a fire disrupts the London Air Traffic Control Centre, the controllers move to an emergency control room at Heathrow. Which is exactly where a group of terrorists want them.
But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye. This is not just an attack on Heathrow. The problem spreads to London City Airport, but the end game is still not clear.
The tension grows. Who is behind this? What do they want? What terrible plan is now playing out at the heart of London’s Air Traffic Control system?
Things will get even worse before the answers emerge. By then, there seems to be no way to stop a terrorist attack far more shocking than anyone had imagined.
Try out the opening chapter below:-
But there is more to the situation than first meets the eye. This is not just an attack on Heathrow. The problem spreads to London City Airport, but the end game is still not clear.
The tension grows. Who is behind this? What do they want? What terrible plan is now playing out at the heart of London’s Air Traffic Control system?
Things will get even worse before the answers emerge. By then, there seems to be no way to stop a terrorist attack far more shocking than anyone had imagined.
Try out the opening chapter below:-
Chapter One
November 1995
Commander Colin FitzHugh’s telephone rang shortly after midnight. He was not expecting a call, but he was awake. He was always awake at that hour in order to give Angela her medication.
He picked up the receiver in the lounge and said, “Yes?” in a dull, resigned tone. His senses became sharply alerted when he heard the voice of Sir James Heatherley, Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office.
“How are you, Colin?” It was the same calm, well-educated voice FitzHugh had heard so many times before. Heatherley didn’t identify himself and didn’t need to.
“Well enough, thank you, Sir James.” FitzHugh responded calmly, but he sensed that something was wrong. Seriously wrong. Since his retirement, no one from the Home Office had seen fit to contact him, and certainly not Sir James Heatherley. Why was he calling now, and at this time of night?
“And Angela?” The voice was clear, but held a hint of tension.
“She has her good days and bad days.” FitzHugh avoided saying that he had only moments before given Angela a powerful painkiller. It didn’t seem appropriate. They both knew that his choice of early retirement had been motivated primarily by his need to look after his wife.
“Yes, I understand your problem.” Heatherley paused and coughed. “I fully understand, but, the fact is, we need your help.”
“Really? What’s happened?”
“A bomb in London. A big one.”
“Another IRA attack?” FitzHugh winced at the thought of yet another outrage on English soil. He pulled anxiously at his well-trimmed beard. The Baltic Exchange bomb, three years ago, had caused eight hundred million pounds’ worth of damage, as well as ending the lives of three people. Two years ago, two children were killed by a bomb in Warrington. Would it never end?
“It seems likely.” Heatherley paused ominously. “The bomb exploded inside the Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton. Figuratively speaking, this has the IRA’s fingerprints all over it.” Heatherley’s voice took on a sad, almost hopeless tone. It was the voice of a man who had more problems than he felt able to handle. “We’re going to try to put a complete security cloak over it for the time being. The press have been told it’s an equipment fire inside the building. We’ll hold onto that line while we try to figure out a strategy. The trouble is, Colin, we haven’t the manpower to deal with this in the way we’d like. You know how hampered we’ve been since the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Good men have been posted elsewhere and inexperience is crippling us. You’re still one of the most experienced men in the country when it comes to Irish Republican terrorism. We need you back again, Colin.”
FitzHugh took a deep breath before replying calmly, but insistently. “You know I can’t help you now, Sir James. Angela needs me here.”
Heatherley’s words came back a little too quickly, as if he had been expecting the rebuff. “I know, I know. We’ve thought of that. We’re sending over a nurse. Someone to take care of Angela. She’s already on her way.” He paused for a brief moment, as if allowing time for the message to sink in. The nurse was already on her way. When he continued, his voice was hesitant. “We’re… asking you to help us, Colin. We could insist, but… we’re asking. We badly need you on this one.”
“How will others feel about that?” FitzHugh deliberately avoided mention of any names in the chain of command at the Home Office.
This time, Heatherley came back fast and aggressive. “I’ve already spoken to all the relevant people. Obviously, the PM is on our side. He wants quick and decisive action on this, and the rest of them know they can’t guarantee to provide it. Like I said, they don’t have the experience, and they know it. No one is going to stand in your way, I can promise you that.”
“Do I have a choice, Sir James?” FitzHugh spoke with an air of resignation.
“As I said, we’re asking you, Colin.” The short silence that followed was pregnant with gravity.
When FitzHugh replied, it was with an element of irony. “You’re asking me, but you’ve already sent the nurse.”
“We hoped you would agree.”
He sighed deeply. “Very well. I’ll do what I can.” What else could he say? He replaced the receiver and went back to where Angela lay in the dimly-lit bedroom. His heart felt heavy.
“Who was it?” Angela’s voice was muted and her eyes dull.
“Sir James Heatherley.”
“What did he want?”
“Me.”
A glistening sheen began to form over her eyes. “Oh, no, Colin. Not now.”
FitzHugh sat down on the side of the bed and took Angela’s hand in his. It felt cold and he rubbed it to help her circulation. “I’m sorry, my love. I shall have to go out for a while. A problem has come up and they want my help.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” A sudden sense of alarm showed in Angela’s voice.
“No. A nurse is on her way. You’ll not be alone.”
“But you’re retired, Colin. By now they should have learned how to cope without you.”
“Yes, I know.” FitzHugh turned his face away so that she would not see the guilt in his eyes.
He wondered whether she would forgive him if she ever learned of the regrets he harboured, regrets for what he had put her through in their life together.
And there was something else.
He felt guilty because he secretly wanted to go.
*
In the quiet of early morning, Peregrine Fraser-Murdoch strode across Connemara Airport and breathed in the cool, fresh air. It felt so good after the years he had spent inside a secure hospital. It was the smell and taste of freedom. It wouldn’t last, of course. When this was over, he would have to go back to that place from where his friends had released him. His enemies would see to that. But, by then, the world would be a different place, and he would have made his mark.
As he walked, an arthritic pain stabbed through his left hip. It happened often these days, a factor of age, but it hadn’t always been like this. He briefly recalled the time when he had been a lean, muscular student at Cambridge University, with the world at his fingertips. Time had played badly with him since those days. Now seventy-five, his head was bald and most of his muscles had turned to flab. He was well aware that extra weight gave him a dumpy appearance, but that no longer mattered. His carefully-planned endgame would wipe aside all his previous sense of degradation.
In a quiet corner of the airport, he paused alongside an old Fokker F27 twin turbo-prop. A nervous twitch began to affect his face. Like the arthritis, it was nothing new, just an irritating sign that his excitement was getting out of hand. He breathed deeply in an effort to ease his mental strain.
A few minutes passed before he felt calmer. Then he climbed aboard the aircraft, carrying a small torch to guide him into the cabin. He paused in mid-stride when a dark figure rose from a seat near the entrance hatch.
He called out, “It’s me, McQuarrie. Only me.”
Padraig McQuarrie emerged from the gloom, a short, dishevelled-looking man, grey-haired and wearing well-crushed combat jacket and trousers.
“You’re early,” the Ulsterman answered in a broad Belfast accent. “What’re you doin’ here at this hour?”
“I couldn’t sleep in the hotel. You should have found me a more comfortable place.” Murdoch eased his stubby body into a seat and breathed heavily. His immaculately tailored lounge suit was crushed under his weight and his podgy hands clasped at the chest of his fine silk shirt. The tightness he felt there wasn’t just the effect of flab: he’d been warned by his doctors that any form of exertion was a strain on his heart.
“It’s secure enough, is that place. They know how to keep their mouths shut.” McQuarrie had the grim, gnarled look of a man who had experienced nothing easy throughout his fifty odd years of life. He acted as if he expected nothing easy in his remaining years. “That hotel’s been good enough for better men that you.”
“The room is not to my liking,” Murdoch snapped. “I don’t like sleeping in a tiny bed with insufficient bedclothes.”
McQuarrie adopted a scornful tone. “You surprise me. You’re supposed to be the product of an English public school, aren’t you?” He sniffed loudly, further emphasising his scathing opinion.
Murdoch ignored him and leaned forward to sweep his torch beam over a metal container sitting on the floor in the gangway. The device in that box was his chosen ticket to fame. Something that would ensure the name of Peregrine Fraser-Murdoch would never be forgotten.
A cockroach scuttled out from beneath a nearby seat. Murdoch put his foot over it and slowly pressed down. The faint crunching sound gave him some small satisfaction. He put a hand to his face to contain another nervous twitch. It seemed to last longer this time.
“Give me a cigarette,” he demanded. He tried to sound calm, but the excitement made him on edge.
McQuarrie threw a pack across the gangway. “Buy yer own in future.”
“Shut up!”
“Please yourself.”
“I usually do.” Murdoch lit up and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. It did nothing to suppress his rising sense of eager anticipation, and the nervous twitch returned.
November 1995
Commander Colin FitzHugh’s telephone rang shortly after midnight. He was not expecting a call, but he was awake. He was always awake at that hour in order to give Angela her medication.
He picked up the receiver in the lounge and said, “Yes?” in a dull, resigned tone. His senses became sharply alerted when he heard the voice of Sir James Heatherley, Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office.
“How are you, Colin?” It was the same calm, well-educated voice FitzHugh had heard so many times before. Heatherley didn’t identify himself and didn’t need to.
“Well enough, thank you, Sir James.” FitzHugh responded calmly, but he sensed that something was wrong. Seriously wrong. Since his retirement, no one from the Home Office had seen fit to contact him, and certainly not Sir James Heatherley. Why was he calling now, and at this time of night?
“And Angela?” The voice was clear, but held a hint of tension.
“She has her good days and bad days.” FitzHugh avoided saying that he had only moments before given Angela a powerful painkiller. It didn’t seem appropriate. They both knew that his choice of early retirement had been motivated primarily by his need to look after his wife.
“Yes, I understand your problem.” Heatherley paused and coughed. “I fully understand, but, the fact is, we need your help.”
“Really? What’s happened?”
“A bomb in London. A big one.”
“Another IRA attack?” FitzHugh winced at the thought of yet another outrage on English soil. He pulled anxiously at his well-trimmed beard. The Baltic Exchange bomb, three years ago, had caused eight hundred million pounds’ worth of damage, as well as ending the lives of three people. Two years ago, two children were killed by a bomb in Warrington. Would it never end?
“It seems likely.” Heatherley paused ominously. “The bomb exploded inside the Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton. Figuratively speaking, this has the IRA’s fingerprints all over it.” Heatherley’s voice took on a sad, almost hopeless tone. It was the voice of a man who had more problems than he felt able to handle. “We’re going to try to put a complete security cloak over it for the time being. The press have been told it’s an equipment fire inside the building. We’ll hold onto that line while we try to figure out a strategy. The trouble is, Colin, we haven’t the manpower to deal with this in the way we’d like. You know how hampered we’ve been since the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Good men have been posted elsewhere and inexperience is crippling us. You’re still one of the most experienced men in the country when it comes to Irish Republican terrorism. We need you back again, Colin.”
FitzHugh took a deep breath before replying calmly, but insistently. “You know I can’t help you now, Sir James. Angela needs me here.”
Heatherley’s words came back a little too quickly, as if he had been expecting the rebuff. “I know, I know. We’ve thought of that. We’re sending over a nurse. Someone to take care of Angela. She’s already on her way.” He paused for a brief moment, as if allowing time for the message to sink in. The nurse was already on her way. When he continued, his voice was hesitant. “We’re… asking you to help us, Colin. We could insist, but… we’re asking. We badly need you on this one.”
“How will others feel about that?” FitzHugh deliberately avoided mention of any names in the chain of command at the Home Office.
This time, Heatherley came back fast and aggressive. “I’ve already spoken to all the relevant people. Obviously, the PM is on our side. He wants quick and decisive action on this, and the rest of them know they can’t guarantee to provide it. Like I said, they don’t have the experience, and they know it. No one is going to stand in your way, I can promise you that.”
“Do I have a choice, Sir James?” FitzHugh spoke with an air of resignation.
“As I said, we’re asking you, Colin.” The short silence that followed was pregnant with gravity.
When FitzHugh replied, it was with an element of irony. “You’re asking me, but you’ve already sent the nurse.”
“We hoped you would agree.”
He sighed deeply. “Very well. I’ll do what I can.” What else could he say? He replaced the receiver and went back to where Angela lay in the dimly-lit bedroom. His heart felt heavy.
“Who was it?” Angela’s voice was muted and her eyes dull.
“Sir James Heatherley.”
“What did he want?”
“Me.”
A glistening sheen began to form over her eyes. “Oh, no, Colin. Not now.”
FitzHugh sat down on the side of the bed and took Angela’s hand in his. It felt cold and he rubbed it to help her circulation. “I’m sorry, my love. I shall have to go out for a while. A problem has come up and they want my help.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” A sudden sense of alarm showed in Angela’s voice.
“No. A nurse is on her way. You’ll not be alone.”
“But you’re retired, Colin. By now they should have learned how to cope without you.”
“Yes, I know.” FitzHugh turned his face away so that she would not see the guilt in his eyes.
He wondered whether she would forgive him if she ever learned of the regrets he harboured, regrets for what he had put her through in their life together.
And there was something else.
He felt guilty because he secretly wanted to go.
*
In the quiet of early morning, Peregrine Fraser-Murdoch strode across Connemara Airport and breathed in the cool, fresh air. It felt so good after the years he had spent inside a secure hospital. It was the smell and taste of freedom. It wouldn’t last, of course. When this was over, he would have to go back to that place from where his friends had released him. His enemies would see to that. But, by then, the world would be a different place, and he would have made his mark.
As he walked, an arthritic pain stabbed through his left hip. It happened often these days, a factor of age, but it hadn’t always been like this. He briefly recalled the time when he had been a lean, muscular student at Cambridge University, with the world at his fingertips. Time had played badly with him since those days. Now seventy-five, his head was bald and most of his muscles had turned to flab. He was well aware that extra weight gave him a dumpy appearance, but that no longer mattered. His carefully-planned endgame would wipe aside all his previous sense of degradation.
In a quiet corner of the airport, he paused alongside an old Fokker F27 twin turbo-prop. A nervous twitch began to affect his face. Like the arthritis, it was nothing new, just an irritating sign that his excitement was getting out of hand. He breathed deeply in an effort to ease his mental strain.
A few minutes passed before he felt calmer. Then he climbed aboard the aircraft, carrying a small torch to guide him into the cabin. He paused in mid-stride when a dark figure rose from a seat near the entrance hatch.
He called out, “It’s me, McQuarrie. Only me.”
Padraig McQuarrie emerged from the gloom, a short, dishevelled-looking man, grey-haired and wearing well-crushed combat jacket and trousers.
“You’re early,” the Ulsterman answered in a broad Belfast accent. “What’re you doin’ here at this hour?”
“I couldn’t sleep in the hotel. You should have found me a more comfortable place.” Murdoch eased his stubby body into a seat and breathed heavily. His immaculately tailored lounge suit was crushed under his weight and his podgy hands clasped at the chest of his fine silk shirt. The tightness he felt there wasn’t just the effect of flab: he’d been warned by his doctors that any form of exertion was a strain on his heart.
“It’s secure enough, is that place. They know how to keep their mouths shut.” McQuarrie had the grim, gnarled look of a man who had experienced nothing easy throughout his fifty odd years of life. He acted as if he expected nothing easy in his remaining years. “That hotel’s been good enough for better men that you.”
“The room is not to my liking,” Murdoch snapped. “I don’t like sleeping in a tiny bed with insufficient bedclothes.”
McQuarrie adopted a scornful tone. “You surprise me. You’re supposed to be the product of an English public school, aren’t you?” He sniffed loudly, further emphasising his scathing opinion.
Murdoch ignored him and leaned forward to sweep his torch beam over a metal container sitting on the floor in the gangway. The device in that box was his chosen ticket to fame. Something that would ensure the name of Peregrine Fraser-Murdoch would never be forgotten.
A cockroach scuttled out from beneath a nearby seat. Murdoch put his foot over it and slowly pressed down. The faint crunching sound gave him some small satisfaction. He put a hand to his face to contain another nervous twitch. It seemed to last longer this time.
“Give me a cigarette,” he demanded. He tried to sound calm, but the excitement made him on edge.
McQuarrie threw a pack across the gangway. “Buy yer own in future.”
“Shut up!”
“Please yourself.”
“I usually do.” Murdoch lit up and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. It did nothing to suppress his rising sense of eager anticipation, and the nervous twitch returned.
