She has more cover where she is.
Michael agreed and moved onto the landing. Putting an ear to the door, the siren filled his left eardrum, but there was no other sound. Then, suddenly, the siren was all around him, filling the staircase and causing Michael to scurry back up to the wall next to the door and raise his gun in the direction of the upper staircase.
Grenade.
Michael still had two grenades clipped to the ammo belt. Unclipping one, he pulled the pin and lobbed it up the staircase’s centre. It exploded in mid-air, taking the three-man team on the stairs above him completely by surprise.
GO!
Michael was up and racing up the stairs. In the background, he could hear Lisa’s voice. Taking the steps two at a time, he reached the landing in a second, where a similar scene of carnage awaited him.
Do it!
Crack, crack, crack. The pistol discharged itself three times, and all movement ceased. One of the men lay wedged in the open steel door to the heart of the club, his torso out of sight. Gripping his legs, Michael pulled the man back onto the landing, then rolled him over to disguise the worst of his injuries for Lisa’s eyes. Hurrying back down the staircase to Lisa, he met her on the first-floor landing, making her way up alone.
She is okay, check the floor space outside the door.
“I’m fine,” she confirmed.
Waiting for a smile of acknowledgement, he turned and went back to the door. Duplicating the procedure, he found the small lounge on the other side of the door empty. Lisa was now behind him at the door, and he gestured for her to move into the corner of the lounge. You could enter the lounge from both sides, by way of hallways. At its centre were four high-backed brown leather chairs and a round Hazelwood table. Lisa positioned herself behind one of them, resting the rifle on the chair’s back to cover both entrances to the room.
Clever girl.
Michael was still looking at her, when she suddenly opened fire. The bullets flying within inches of his head, he watched as the power of the gun pushed her off balance, the bullets arcing up, ripping into the walls and ceiling of the lounge. When she was finally able to release the trigger of the gun, she landed with a hard bump on the carpeted floor. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that another guard lay flat on his back with two impact wounds. One was in his stomach, and the second had taken the top left corner of his head off.
Take the left passage.
Grabbing Lisa’s left arm, he pulled her onto her feet, and they set off. Michael’s gun was pointing down the dark hallway, Lisa’s rifle covering their backs. At the end of the passageway, the main hall came into view, along with the club’s exit. They had been moving too fast and were suddenly in the open.
Get down!
Dragging her down with him, Michael scanned for a threat. Fortunately, there was none, and they found themselves lying in the middle of the entrance hall without any cover.
Get to your feet!
There was no time. A blast went off somewhere behind them, and the club’s main entrance flew open, the shiny black door smashing against the outside wall, letting in a rush of fresh air.
“Police! Drop your weapons!”
Both of them froze, letting their guns fall to the ground and holding their hands over their heads as best they could. Five police officers dressed in blue fatigues and bulletproof jackets surrounded them, pressing them back to the ground and handcuffing their hands behind their backs, neither resisting.
You must get out of the building!
Michael looked around for a threat. Why would Hofmann want to get them out of the building? They will blow it up; they can’t let the authorities find the basement!
“We have to get out, there is a bomb!” Michael screamed it at the officer who seemed to be in charge.
He reacted without delay.
“Where is the bomb?” the policeman asked as he pulled Michael to his feet.
“I don’t know, but they told me they were going to blow up the building.”
The whole group was now moving towards the exit at speed. One of the officers was barking orders into a walk-talky on his chest.
“Clear, clear, clear—we have a bomb!”
As they spoke, the basement was filling with gas, each room connected to a network of pipes that stretched the length and breadth of the building. Charges had been built into the walls at strategic points, the demolition plan dating back to the time when the club was built. The basement would be torched to destroy any documents, then the building would be brought down in such a way that it concertinas, the upper floors filling the basement with rubble, so that it would obliterate any evidence left inside.
The group felt the rumble as they ran, like an earthquake, their surroundings vibrating around them. The burn had begun.
“MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!” the lead policemen shouted as they went.
The charges had been set to cause an implosion, detonating in the bottom middle of the building first, then spreading out towards its sides. This way, the centre falls together and the sides fall inwards. Fortunately for them, the Gallery Street entrance was at the end of the building. The sound of the first charges being set off encouraged the group into an extreme increase in pace, the officers physically carrying their handcuffed prisoners out of the doors. As they hit the night air, the doors and walls of the club were literally moving in the opposite direction. It was a remarkable picture. People moving in one direction, and the building moving in the other. Standing in a first-floor window of the government buildings across the street, Von Klitzing was not able to enjoy the spectacle. He cursed himself.
You should have done it earlier, you fool!
38
The control centre was built into the second-floor basement at the Meyer-Hofmann facility in Ellmau. Housed in a large auditorium, the double door entrance led to a gallery that held chairs for twenty spectators. In front of them, the auditorium dropped to three banks of desks, each holding eight monitors and keyboards. Built on three levels falling from the gallery at the back of the room to a small stage at the front the room, it was thirty metres from back to front and twenty metres wide. The front and side walls held huge LED screens, which covered their entire surface area and were angled up towards the gallery. The remaining walls and ceiling were coated in a matte black emulsion that sucked any superfluous light from the theatre. Hans Bremen entered the room and looked on in awe. Since taking control of his grandson’s body, he had felt like a time traveller. The last war room he had visited, had received its information via telephone and courier. Model tanks and plastic figures had depicted the battlefield on a simple wooden table. Here, real-time video showed him pictures from Wall Street, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Hong Kong stock markets simultaneously on the left-hand screen. Live tickers running along the bottom of each picture showed him fluctuations in the markets. Helmet and webcams sent pictures via satellite from the Iran training camp on one-half of the right screen, and a distant nuclear power station could be seen on the left side of the same display. The centre LCD brought live pictures of their forces mustering in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.
As it should be. The destruction of Israel will take centre stage, Bremen thought.
He knew that in a matter of hours his commanders would start the offensive, and the pictures would change to show their personal battles being fought. The banks of computers were operated by a twenty-four-man team. Each man would be in direct communication with their counterpart in the field. They, in turn, were being monitored by two officers who wandered along the aisles between the men, comparing clipboards with screens and occasionally interacting with the operators.