Jimmy Coates: Power

Come on, Jimmy told himself, feeling the sweat crawling down his neck. There’s no way you can defuse a bomb. There was no ticking clock, no red digits showing him a countdown. There certainly wasn’t anything that looked like an off switch, and all the wires were the same colour—black. Then he noticed the condensation on the glass tubes.

Of course, he thought. Nitro freezes at thirteen degrees. The chemical was usually a liquid, but Jimmy realised it had been cooled into a solid to make it easier to transport. At the same time, he knew that as nitroglycerin thawed, it became even more unstable.

The piles of crates in front of him seemed to change shape. In Jimmy’s imagination, some of them even became transparent. He could see exactly how this bomb was supposed to work.

To his horror, he felt a rush of pleasure. Something inside him was impressed by the artful construction of the bomb—thrilled even. It was built in such a way that it required only a single detonator. That would shoot a charge through the wires, setting off a chain reaction as it raised the temperature of each tube of nitroglycerin to melt them in a specific order. That delicately arranged chain reaction would multiply the size of the explosion a hundred times.

The beauty of it was that the bomb was virtually sabotage-proof. The detonator was nowhere to be seen —presumably hidden at the very centre of the pile of crates. Jimmy noticed tiny gold rings round the connections between the wires and the glass tubes. A second trigger mechanism, he realised. Any attempt to disconnect the wires or get to the detonator would set off the chain reaction early. That left no way of stopping it, and no way of predicting when it would explode, even with the expertise of an assassin inside him. Jimmy knew this bomb could blow up at any moment.

He ran back and heaved on the metal shutter at the entrance, gritting his teeth and straining every muscle from his neck to his calves. It wouldn’t budge. Jimmy fell back, panting. He didn’t understand it. In the past, he’d busted through reinforced walls at embassies and Secret Service facilities—why did a residential tower block need protection that was even stronger? He went to the attendant’s booth to find the controls. The desk was dripping with blood. Jimmy forced himself to wipe it away. Thick chunks of hot, quivering flesh came with it. But it was useless; the controls did nothing.

With a wild grunt of horror, Jimmy threw himself at the metal shutter once more. He kicked at it and wiped his hands all over it, clawing madly until the grey was smeared with dark red, and shouting out for help. None came. When Jimmy finally stepped away, his chest was heaving and his mind was frantic. There had to be another way out.

He ran to the other side of the car park, to the door that led on to the stairwell that served the flats. Jimmy opened it with an impatient tug, but then had to stop dead. The doorway was blocked, floor to ceiling, by construction rubble.

Jimmy stared at the huge rocks and metal rods that barred his exit and kicked out. He managed to knock the corner off one of the rocks, but it only revealed another layer of rubble behind it. Jimmy knew he didn’t have enough time to claw his way out, even if that was possible. As a final attempt to attract the attention of the outside world, he punched his palm into the fire alarm. There were no bells, no sirens.

Jimmy’s rising anger mixed with a cold fear. His hands wanted to tremble, but his inner strength held them rigid. Who were the men who’d assembled the bomb and brought it here? Who were they working for? What was it about this particular tower block?

Jimmy closed his eyes for a second to settle himself, then strode back across the concrete towards the white van. As soon as he stood in front of the open van doors again, he sensed a change. The condensation on the glass tubes was disappearing. When Jimmy held his palms up towards the crates he could feel they were slightly warmer than before. That’s the detonating mechanism, Jimmy realised. He didn’t know whether he’d worked it out himself or if it was his programming. The line between the two was constantly blurring.

Now when he looked across the crates, he imagined he could see right to the heart, where he knew there must be a simple heating system. There was no need for a timer or remote signal because as soon as the heater reached a certain temperature, the explosives at the core would become unstable, setting off the chain reaction through the wires and blowing the entire tower block out of existence.

He desperately looked around him, thinking that perhaps if he could find enough water, dousing the crates would dampen the explosion. But in truth he had no idea whether water would have any effect, and there wasn’t any to be seen anyway.

The only liquid around was petrol—lots of it. Could Jimmy possibly use that to lessen the force of the explosion? It seemed crazy, but if he was right about how the bomb was designed…

Jimmy dashed back to the attendant’s booth and picked up the man’s blood-soaked newspaper. He took it to the van and held it against the driver’s window, then jabbed his elbow into it hard. He leaned in through the shattered glass to release the hand brake, then he walked to the front of the vehicle and, as carefully as he possibly could, he heaved on the bumper to pull it out of its bay. If this bomb was going to explode, Jimmy thought, he may as well use it to blast through the metal shutter.

It was difficult to move the van at first, and Jimmy didn’t want to pull too hard in case he rocked the thawing nitro, but he reasoned that if it had been stable enough to drive through the streets of London, tugging it a few more metres was worth the risk. He took the strain in his back and thighs, then jumped back to the driver’s door to push and steer at the same time. Eventually the van was right up against the metal shutter.

Jimmy wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The van was giving off more heat now. He could feel it a metre away. It won’t hold much longer, Jimmy thought. Now came the harder part. Jimmy grabbed the mug of tea from the attendant’s booth. It was still steaming and spattered with blood. Jimmy smashed it against the wall and used the handle to prise open the van’s fuel cap.

By now, even the outside of the van was warm to the touch. Jimmy could feel it matched by the rising heat of his own fear. Even if his plan worked, he would only be able to reduce the power of the blast, not prevent it completely. That left a worrying question: Jimmy might stop the whole building collapsing, but how was he going to survive himself?

He went back to the front of the van and tore into the cushion of the driver’s seat, pulling out a whole spring and great fistfuls of wadding. He twisted the wadding tight around the spring, leaving a length of metal at the end for him to hold. When he finished he admired his creation: a huge, mouldy candyfloss stick that smelled of damp. Then he pushed the padding into the van’s fuel tank, feeding it down as far as he could, and held it there to soak up some diesel.

When he pulled it out a waft of fumes smacked him in the face. It combined with the scent of nitroglycerin already lining his nostrils and set off alarm bells in his head. Was this really a good idea? He gulped, gathered his courage and returned to the bomb.

Using his twist of seat-padding like a paintbrush, Jimmy carefully dabbed the wires with diesel. Despite his nerves, his hand was rock steady. When he leaned in to get to the wires towards the back, his cheek was millimetres from the glass tubes. The heat was much stronger now, making Jimmy sweat harder. Any second, the nitro could reach flashpoint—but Jimmy planned to give it a helping hand.

He dashed back to the attendant’s booth and quickly saw what he needed: hooked on to the security guard’s belt was a torch. Jimmy wiped the blood from the handle and unscrewed the plastic cap on the front of the flashlight as he ran across the car park.

Now he was a few metres away from the back of the van staring at the enormous bomb in front of him. What am I doing? he thought to himself desperately. I’ve covered a giant bomb in diesel. At the same time, his thumb clicked the torch on and off, itching to connect the bare filament with the diesel fumes. Jimmy could feel the battle raging inside him. His familiar, rational terror was obliterated by a wash of something else—something close to joy. His programming was thriving on the heat and the danger, relishing the chance to set off a massive explosion. Not just set it off, Jimmy reassured himself. Control it.

He knew that lighting the diesel would raise the temperature of the bomb by the critical few degrees needed to set off the blast. But in the seconds before that happened, the flames would burn through the wires, eliminating the delicately designed chain reaction. The crates of nitroglycerin would go up separately and randomly—not as one huge, coordinated eruption.

Finally, Jimmy brought the torch up to the seat stuffing soaked in diesel. He carefully clicked the torch and a spark lit a couple of strands of cotton at the very tip. Immediately, the fumes ignited and the whole twist of material became a flaming beacon.

He stared into the back of the van again. This time the flickering of his flame made the glass tubes seem to dance, as if they were excited about what Jimmy was about to do. This could be the biggest mistake of my life, Jimmy thought.

Just do it, he ordered himself. With that, he hurled the flame towards the bomb, twisted on his heels, and ran.

06 NELSON’S SHADOW

BANG!

Jimmy was lifted off his feet. The heat stabbed into his back and the whole world disappeared in a white flash. He slammed into the wall at the far end of the car park and slumped to the floor, his brain juddering in his skull.

He rolled for cover behind a car to watch each tube of nitroglycerin roar harder and hotter than the last one. Between blasts, Jimmy caught glimpses of flames melting the insides of cars. The fire spread, buckling the metal of every vehicle until its own petrol tank gave way and added an extra explosion. Jimmy hardly noticed that he was choking back the black smoke. He was fixated on a single thought: had he succeeded? The chain reaction would have blown the whole tower block to pieces in a single blast. Compared to that, this was a minor accident.

Then came an explosion so strong Jimmy felt like it would crack his eyeballs. It sent a rumble through his whole body, juddering his bones and mashing his organs. For a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. He realised the him was trembling—badly. So was the floor. When Jimmy looked through the chaos he could see the pillars that supported the ceiling were crumbling.

At first, small cracks opened up in the concrete, then chips of it came away and the cracks grew. Jimmy watched, aghast, as a huge cloud of grey dust mixed with the fire and black smoke. I’ve got to get out of here, he thought. But the only way out was through the exit where Jimmy had dragged the van. The metal shutter had been blown to smithereens with the first explosion, so that wasn’t a problem any more. But to get out, Jimmy had to run straight past the bomb—while the crates of nitroglycerin were still blowing up.

There was hardly any gap between explosions now. The heat was too great and the thaw was too rapid for any of the nitro to hold. Blast upon blast rocked the whole place. Jimmy staggered to his feet, almost knocked down every time another detonation sent shockwaves through the floor. Concrete rained down around him. He couldn’t see anything more than a metre in front of him, he could only hear the explosions and feel the impact. He felt his inner sense trying to time his run, but surely that wasn’t possible.

Half sprinting, half stumbling, Jimmy strained forwards with a flood of excitement. I can make it, he told himself.

BOOM!

Jimmy was flung into the sky by a pressure wave travelling at 9000 metres per second. The world swirled into an orange and black blur of flame and smoke. All he could feel was pure heat all around him, as if it was coming from his skin itself. Jimmy was thrown across the street inside a massive fireball. Then he slammed against something hard, and although the orange around him disappeared, he still felt like he was on fire. He heard a cry and realised it was his own voice, mixing with hundreds of other peoples’ screams.

He felt his body trying to stand, but he couldn’t. The last thing he saw was the huge tower block he’d just escaped. One side of it was crumbling, then it slumped downwards and collapsed.

The traffic around Trafalgar Square was even worse than usual. Cars honked and buses snorted as they stacked up in all the surrounding roads. In the very centre of the noise, in the pedestrianised part of the square, a tall, slim man in a long, navy coat was standing on top of an upturned plastic box, a megaphone to his mouth.

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