Honour Bound Read Online Free Page A

floor in a confused tangle of twisted
metal and shattered concrete.
     
    Graham Harker could no longer feel any pain. He was only
feet from the door when the blast wave imploded the glass. He was lying in a
widening pool of blood being fed from thousands of puncture wounds from the
dozens of bodies of people who had been making for the doors. The flesh on his
face had been stripped to the bone, eyes, nose and
lips missing, his teeth displayed in a bloody rictus grin. He felt a curious sense of well being as the final breath escaped his
body, slipping him into dark oblivion.
     
    “Jesus
fucking Christ!” Sergeant Ray Moore swore as the sound of the blast thundered over the bus
station. He stood entranced as a pillar of thick black smoke rose from the
Terminal building, seemingly pushed upwards by the deep orange flames that were
greedily devouring the remains of the roof. “Fucking shit!” he shook his head
as if the sudden motion could change the information his eyes were receiving.
He turned on his heel and ran the few yards to the incident control vehicle
shouting orders to other policemen who were transfixed by the mushrooming
cloud, now differing in shades of black as the smoke writhed and twisted in the
still air like so may agonised serpents. On reaching the control vehicle, he
paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Jesus fucking wept!” He wrenched the
door open and grabbed the microphone from the nearest bank of equipment.
      
    “What
the hell’s going on sarge ,” a policewoman asked as
she set up the computer link to the control room a mile away on the outskirts
of the airport. Two of her colleagues looked at the sergeant, their expressions
asking the same question.
      
    Moore
paused briefly, not answering, not trusting his voice to be more that a
panicked squeak . He breathed deeply to steady his
shaking hands and regain his self-control before speaking on the radio. He was
half way through a situation report and a request for further assistance when a
second Royal Mail liveried van exploded inside the bus station. The van, less
than thirty yards from the control vehicle contained four pounds of Semtex explosive attached to a fifty-gallon drum of petrol.
The resulting fireball engulfed emergency vehicles and coaches in a searing
ball of flame. People, who seconds before had been standing in orderly queues
and staring incredulously at the rising smoke, now ran in confusion as though
in some grotesque dance, as flames burnt through clothing and flesh. Some, in
blind panic, ran into the flames of burning vehicles only to die in screaming
agony as the fire, ever hungry, devoured all in its path. Others made but a few
paces before dropping to the ground, their pain finally over as scorched and
tortured lungs could no longer supply the much needed oxygen.
     
    A
cloying smell of charred flesh and scorched metal filled the air. A second pall
of thick oily smoke climbed skywards as if in macabre competition with the
first. Many seconds passed before the screams of the injured could be heard.

 
    -3-
    Vance
Talbot was the senior field controller of the ATU, the Anti Terrorist Unit, a
position he had held for the last five years. He was a tall man, three inches
over six feet with film star looks that bordered on the ruggedly handsome. An
athletic physique and shock of jet-black hair above an evenly tanned face made
him look ten years younger than his actual forty-four years. He was sitting in
his favourite position, leather Admirals chair half reclined with his feet
crossed at the ankles resting on a clear corner of an otherwise cluttered desk
while he read through the contents of the Heathrow bombing file. As ever, when
in deep concentration he unconsciously toyed with the gold band on his ring
finger with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. His wife, Jayne, had
once called his small but functional office the eagle’s nest, high up as it was
on the twenty-fourth floor of the building that served