Honour Bound Read Online Free

and looks
of grim determination on their faces. The passenger’s protests would bounce off
their body armour like spent verbal bullets. Armstrong smiled to himself at the
thought of the complaints he would have to conciliate.
     
    Graham Harker put his newspaper into his briefcase, cursing
mildly to himself at the prospect of the delay, and walked towards the exit on
the west side of the terminal.
     
    Christos Christoforou decided he could put up with a mild irritation
and joined the slowly moving crowd. He was just thankful it wasn’t raining
outside.
     
    Sharon
Latham folded up the pushchair, and with Scott held tightly to her chest, made
her way with so many others towards the doors.
     
    Although
different emergency and evacuation procedures had been an important part of
Armstrong’s management course, it had not occurred to him that he would have to
put his knowledge of them to the test so soon. He thought about the last few
days and the action the emergency services would have taken. The same action as
they would take today. Fire and Rescue, along with the ambulance crews, would
rendezvous at the central bus station on an area specially set aside, and
always kept clear. The police and airport security would be making sure the
building was clear, and trying to keep order among the evacuated passengers. He
could already hear the distant sounds of the first sirens as emergency vehicles
forced their way through the near endless traffic in the entrance tunnel
beneath the northern runway. The airport was a victim of its own success,
forcing it to operate daily traffic jams. He turned his attention back to the
departures concourse, watching the steady flow of the crowds for a moment
longer. He nodded with satisfaction at the speed of the evacuation before
setting off to the west doors to liaise with the senior officers from the
emergency services.
     
    At
7.35, a Ford Transit van in Royal Mail livery, that had been parked outside the
terminal for six minutes exploded with a thunderous roar. The blast, heard over
three miles away, carved a huge crater in the road and shattered the hundreds
of square feet of glass that formed the front of the Terminal building.
     
    Sharon
Latham, carrying Scott and pushing the folded pushchair, stepped through the
sliding doors into the sunshine as the van exploded. Mother and son died
instantly, two of many spared no time for prayer or thoughts of loved ones,
vaporised by the explosion and the following fireball.
    The
immense force of the blast sent shards of glass, along with fragments of wood,
concrete and steel ripping through both levels of the building like jagged
missiles at nearly twice the speed of sound. Bodies were flung in all
directions, scattered like leaves in the path of a hurricane. Chunks of debris,
large and small, propelled by a torrent of smoke laden air scythed through
unresisting flesh and bone with barely a reduction in speed. Windows from the
shops inside the building added to the devastation as the blast wave howled
past, reducing them to razor sharp shrapnel daggers that stabbed again and
again into already mutilated flesh.
     
    The
last thoughts of Christos Christoforou were ones of his native Cyprus. The sound of flames steadily consuming the area
where his twisted and broken body lay, were translated by his dying brain into
the sounds of waves gently breaking on a sandy beach. In his minds eye he could
see a bronzed and beautiful woman beckoning to him as she lay in the surf,
white water cascading over her body. He tried to call to her but no sound
emerged. His eyes closed as he finally returned to the land of his birth.
     
    Huge
steel roof supports, exposed to pressures far exceeding their design
capabilities, buckled under the enormous strain and collapsed in a deadly
torrent. Prefabricated sections of the roof rained down, sweeping aside
elevated walkways and balconies as though made of matchwood. The wreckage added
to the destruction below, crashing to the