The article came out a few years ago and gave any wannabe bomber step-by-step instructions to whip up his or her very own bomb. It could be deadly if the bomber had powerful explosives, but not in this instance.
‘If it is a terrorist attack, then it’s not a sophisticated one,’ Stuart continues. ‘A couple of rifles, an ineffectual home-made bomb and some paint on a CCTV camera. It seems amateur.’
‘Yeah, let’s hope so.’
But she feels disquieted because why set off a bomb in the middle of the woods? All it did was alert the police to a possible attack. It doesn’t make sense.
‘Something feels off to you?’ she asks Stuart.
‘A little, yeah.’
‘We’re almost there.’
Through the driving snow, she sees mast-mounted infra-red CCTV cameras and antennae sticking up from police mobile command and control vehicles. They are parked next to rapid response paramedic vehicles, behind them cars and vans belonging to armed police and counterterrorism. The emergency vehicles have arrived recently, no snow yet accumulated on their roofs and windscreens.
The emergency drills are paying off in this impressively fast deployment and Rose realizes that the drills are as much about the logistics, how to implement an as-fast-as-humanly-possible response, as about what to do once they’re there.
‘Relatives are at a leisure centre five miles away. We have two police officers with them,’ Letwynd says.
He parks the Discovery and she gets out. ‘You left in a hurry?’ he says, noticing now that she’s wearing a dress without a coat. Because her coat, gloves and scarf are all on a chair in St Michael’s hospital maternity department. There was a ‘Turn Off Your Mobile’ rule, which she’d obeyed, but kept her pager on – nothing about pagers in the rules –
School attack. A chopper waiting.
Too urgent and too warm in the hospital to stop and think about her coat; bloody freezing now.
There are three mobile command and control vehicles next to each other, each with an on-board generator for power, able to receive and view footage from remote deployable static cameras, body-worn cameras, helicopters and UAVs. They have advanced communication systems for instant sharing of data and video.
The briefing is being held in the first vehicle, occupied by Bronze Command, then Rose and her team will occupy the one on the left-hand side. She guesses the third is for the heads of armed units or counterterrorism, perhaps both.
While Gold Commander is in overall command and sets the strategy (basically: rescue the kids and staff, arrest the perpetrators, secure and preserve evidence) and Silver Commander is the tactical adviser on how to achieve that, it is down to Bronze Commander to actually implement the plan. Gold Commander and Silver Commander are both off site, but Bronze Commander is the person on the ground and has been assigned officers, including armed officers and specialists.
As Rose hurriedly walks with Letwynd, she passes the Trojans – BMW SUVs with yellow stickers marking them as armed response vehicles. She can feel the heat from their still-warm engines. Nobody’s inside, their gun safes emptied of Glock pistols, Heckler & Koch assault carbines and SIG Sauer automatic rifles.
‘They’re doing a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, apparently, the kids in the theatre,’ Letwynd says.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No.’
‘How fucking amazing is that?’
She wonders for a moment how many stories are playing out here simultaneously, connected by time and place.
A middle-aged black woman, who’s also hurrying towards the command and control vehicles, holds out her hand.
‘Dannisha Taylor, hostage and crisis negotiator,’ she says. Rose takes her hand, notices its warmth and strength.
‘DI Rose Polstein.’
Rose opens the door of Bronze Command’s command and control vehicle and they go in.
*
It’s almost as cold as outside, snow tracked across the floor. Computer systems are being set up, two screens already operational, the vehicle crowded. Bronze Commander, a man in his fifties with red hair and florid face, sweating despite the freezing weather, is pinning a large plan of Old School up on the wall. Rose, like virtually every other officer, has never met him, doesn’t know his name, but he’ll be referred to by everyone as Bronze Commander, keeping things as simple as possible. He points at the plan of Old School.
‘He’s in a long interior corridor with an L-shaped bend. There are no windows or skylights and no other access short of digging a bloody tunnel to him. So no way to mount a surprise attack. If we attempt to storm the Old School building, he will have time to open fire before we take him out.’
So that’s why he chose Old School, Rose thinks, rather than New School which had many more students and staff, because he could seal himself and his captives away from both the road and escape, and from the police.
‘Given these facts,’ Bronze Commander says, his hand slapping the plan of Old School on the wall, as if angry with the layout, ‘we only go in if he starts firing.’
A young woman staring at a monitor, wearing a headset under a hijab, puts a hand up to request silence and everyone falls quiet.
‘UAV’s picked up the second gunman,’ she says.
They cluster round her screen. The picture from the police drone, a UAV, starts fuzzy, snow falling and branches of a tree obscuring part of the image, but she adjusts the digital zoom and the image becomes clearer: a man in army combat fatigues, his face hidden under a black balaclava, pointing a gun. She moves closer in towards the gun; stills will be taken and blown up later, but even at this distance it’s clearly a semi-automatic. The gun is braced against his right shoulder, a finger on the trigger. Ammunition belts are looped around him.
‘Move the drone out,’ Letwynd says.
‘Jesus,’ someone whispers.
In front of the gunman is an old brick building with large windows. The pottery room. Half a row of what look like clay tiles have been formed at the bottom of the windows. Someone’s hands are putting in more tiles, crouched down so you can’t see a face. The tiles are protection, Rose realizes, the teacher is trying to protect them. The gunman is standing ten feet or so from the pottery room, his semi-automatic trained at the windows and their soft clay tiles.
For a few seconds, there is silence in the crowded vehicle; the air seems to alter, to grow damp and heavy.
‘The children aren’t visible, they are probably crouched down, perhaps underneath tables,’ Bronze Commander says, ‘but he’s tall and his weapon is powerful. With that trajectory, he can kill them from where he’s standing. We must now assume that the gunman in Old School also has a semi-automatic.’
Rose thinks that the original rifle shots were a deliberate misdirection, so that they wouldn’t see this was a more sophisticated and brutal attack.
‘Two messages have just been received by the BBC,’ an officer says. ‘First message, if they see police they will shoot the children. Second message, if anybody tries to escape they will be shot.’
Rose hears orders being given to armed officers on the ground to pull back; to wait.
‘How will they see us? Surveillance drone?’ Letwynd asks.
‘Probably,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘There are still numerous drones above the school, which could belong to the press or sightseers, but the attackers may also have one up there. We need to clear them. At present, our snipers are too far away from the pottery room and visibility is too poor to take him out cleanly. We risk wounding him before killing him and if he puts any pressure on the trigger he can inflict multiple civilian casualties. It would also tip off his pal in Old School, who’d open fire too. Until the drones are down we cannot risk going any closer; not unless we have no other option. Detective Inspector Polstein, what’s your opinion?’