Marching Out

Story Code: M/F, Public Sex, Action Story

I flagged the bus down, it was what they call an overflow bus, it was one of the most congested services in London, the number had an A in front to signify that it wasn't running to the usual schedule, it was an addition to the timetable and once it was empty it would swap the destination blind to 'Not In Service' and return to the garage to wait for a new assignment. I paid a pound for a ticket to the north side of the River Thames although I was hoping to get off way before that because I'd have to walk back to my Range Rover.

I walked through the bus looking at the face of every other passenger...I was hoping not to recognise anyone but I recognised a face in the fifth row, left hand side of the bus. He was window blocking, sitting in the aisle seat to prevent anyone sitting next to him. He didn't look too alert...rather...drugged or drunk, he looked almost like he was on the verge of falling asleep. Row six had an elderly woman also window blocking, I stood at her side and said, "Excuse me, may I sit there please?"

She looked all around, I could see in her eyes that she didn't want a stranger sitting next to her on her ride into the city but I also saw a look of resignation, there were other free seats but they were all next to men...like the man sitting in front of her and I was another woman...like her. She reluctantly slid across to the window seat.

"Were you waiting for the bus for very long?"

She looked annoyed with me for talking to her but she responded, "Twenty minutes, two busses ran past me full, I guess we're all lucky they put on the extra bus, they often do at this time of day!"

"You'd think they'd put bigger busses on the seventy-one route, they're always so full...especially at this time on Fridays."

She nodded her head and looked out of the window, a well proven way of ending a conversation with a stranger on a crowded bus. We were approaching Westminster Bridge and it was almost three thirty in a Friday afternoon. I saw his right hand slip out of his overcoat pocket...a heavy overcoat, unusual for a summer's afternoon when it was almost thirty degrees centigrade. I saw a box in his hand, two wires running from the box up the sleeve of his coat.

His thumb was pressing down on a pushbutton; the traffic lights at the end of Lambeth Palace Road turned to red and stopped our progress. A voice in my ear crackled, "Gold Command have just confirmed the chatter is for the time and place but all tangos have reported negative contacts on all bus routes crossing Westminster Bridge...White One and Two...report your position please, tangos require collection."

I looked at the back of the woman's head, we were outside the entrance to the car park for Saint Thomas Hospital, "No wonder this bus is so popular, they charge ninety pounds a day to use the car park at Saint Thomas Hospital."

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The woman ignored me and looked even more intently out of the window, trying to discourage my talking to her any more.

The voice in my ear crackled, "White Two...are you on a bus?"

"Yes!"

"Do you have contact?"

"Yes!"

The woman turned to give me a disgusted look because I was still talking to her even though she was trying to feign interest out of the bus window. Fortunately she returned her interest to the entrance to the Florence Nightingale Museum so she didn't see me take a screwdriver out of my handbag; it was a medium blade, un-insulated screwdriver with a red handle, what our mechanics called an electrician's screwdriver. I'd found the screwdriver in the toolkit in the boot of the Range Rover I was driving to ferry Tangos Five to Eight to various bus stops. They needed to catch busses that would cross the Thames from South to North in the target hour between three fifteen and three thirty. The screwdriver was the only weapon I could find in a hurry when I spotted an additional bus to the schedule heading to St James's Park and had to act fast.

The lights changed and the bus jolted. I dropped my handbag on the floor and its contents spilled all over the aisle, I barked, "Bloody thing!"

I reached down with my right hand to pick my handbag up, he looked down and to his right, his movements were slow...treacle like...instead of grasping my handbag, I wrapped my hand around his right hand, my thumb pressing his thumb down against the button. I was gambling...his plan was to wait until the bus crossed Westminster Bridge before lifting his thumb off of the dead man's switch and detonating this suicide vest opposite the pedestrian exit from the Houses of Parliament at the time that many Members of Parliament would be walking out of the building. My gamble was, if he was too strong for me he would detonate the bus here outside the museum, everyone on the bus would have been killed and a few pedestrians as well but not the thousands of people that would be milling around watching the MP's leaving Parliament...the lesser of Two evils.

As he struggled to shake my hand off of his I reached over the back of his seat and pressed the blade of the screwdriver against the base of his skull and rammed the point of the screwdriver as hard as I could, inward and upward as I yanked my hand from left to right. There was only one heartbeat after the point of the screwdriver entered his skull but that sent a jet of blood over the woman sitting next to me. She looked to see what had just splashed over her blouse and screamed, she screamed even louder when she saw my hand stirring the screwdriver inside the man's head.

Screaming was contagious, I yelled out at the top of my voice, "Be quiet and sit down...White Two to Gold Command, I need the bomb squad urgently at the junction of Lambeth Palace Road and Westminster Bridge Road, I'm holding X-ray One's thumb down on the dead man's switch of his bomb."

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"They're on route White Two, Evacuate the bus as calmly and as quickly as you can."

I shouted again because everyone on the bus was in in a state of panic, "Every one behind me leave the bus by the rear emergenct exit, everyone in front of me get off the bus by the front door...tell anyone out on the pavement to get as far away as possible."

I wasn't sure if anyone actually heard the end of my instructions because the sound of police car sirens drowned me out. The location and the time of the suspected suicide bomber were known and half the Metropolitan Police Force were standing by in side roads all around the area...they had been keeping out of sight so as not to alert the bomber that they were on to him.

The Bomb Squad were close to hand as well, they were on me in forty seconds. I was very unnerved when the Bomb Technician waddled along the aisle in his 'Michelin Man Suit'. He was blast protected; I was wearing a lightweight summer dress. The elderly woman sitting by the window was almost catatonic. She wasn't able to get past me and was too old and inflexible to clamber over the back of our seat so she was stuck there, splattered with blood and sitting next to a crazy woman who had just killed a man with her bare hands.

"Hi, I'm Ray...I'll be your bomb technician today...how you doing darling?"

"I'm White Two and I've had better days...I'm supposed to be on a flight to Malta around about now for two weeks of training and sunbathing."

The buttons were carefully cut off of the front of the x-ray's coat and the sleeve of his limp left arm was pulled off, exposing half of the suicide vest. My face was just inches away from ten blocks of Military grade 'C-four', ten kilos of powerful explosives encased in nails and bolts, each block of explosives had two detonators inserted. The bomb tech looked nervously at me, "Double detonators...possibly double circuit, one open, one closed. We've turned off all cell towers in Central London so the bomb can't be detonated by remote control but this is going to take a while...how are you holding up?"

I looked down at my hand, I wasn't only holding his thumb in position on the trigger I was holding the deadweight of his right arm and hand, "I've had better days...my hand is starting to cramp though."

"I'll be as quick as I can...My mate Bob is going to cut the back off of your seat and help your friend get off the bus and then I'll start pulling the detonators."

I heard the sound of a pump running behind me, a second Michelin Man was using hydraulic cutting equipment to cut through the metal supports holding the back of the seat to the base and the bar running up to the ceiling. It took just two minutes before Bob was hauling the woman backwards across the seat into row seven. She suddenly came to life and in between screaming she was worrying about her shopping bag that was on the floor at the side of where her legs had been. Bob told her that he was more interested in saving her life than saving her shopping.

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She was dragged to the back of the bus and helped down out of the emergency door.

Ray was about to start working on the bomb but his hand went up to his left ear, "Understood but I'm not leaving her!"

There was a crackle in my ear, "Cobra don't want the bomb touching, there are three hundred patients in Saint Thomas Hospital that can't be moved so they've been instructed to move the bus to a safer place."

"Saint James's Park is the closest safe place but it means driving the bomb right past the front door of Parliament."

"That's okay, all MP's have been moved to the back of the building and the police are moving the public as far out of the way as possible. Your team are forming up on the park to clear that area right now."

I looked around, tall buildings all around us, there were even people in the hospital windows looking down on the bus, I suddenly felt all alone in a very crowded city. Bob climbed back into the bus, this time at the front; he called out, "Ray, I'm driving the bus to Saint James's Park."

"Don't play silly buggers Bob, you don't have a driving license."

"Don't panic Ray, the driver's just given me a crash course in how to work the bus."

Ray looked over at me and shook his head, "I trust Bob with my life every day with explosives but he's railed his driving test seven times...having him behind the wheel of something this big scares the shit out of me."

A police car drove across the front of the bus slowly, they were making announcements over their loud speaker system telling members of the public to move as far away from the road as they could get. The police car drove at slower than walking pace across Westminster Bridge and Bob started the bus moving slowly forward. If I thought the professional driver had jolted the bus when it set off from the traffic lights it was nothing compared to the jolt that Bob gave us. As Bob turned left he managed to mount the pavement and scrape the side of the bus against the railing that stopped pedestrians stepping out into the road before the crossing point, "Sorry guys, my bad...I'll get the hang of this thing soon."

We were crawling along a totally empty road; the only moving thing in sight was the police car barking out warning messages. I'd never seen the area around Parliament this quiet in my life, even at two o'clock in the morning there would usually be people milling around in front of the government buildings and it was now three forty-five on a busy Friday afternoon.

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My mind drifted back sixteen hours. I was at a party with George in a yuppie apartment in Camden Town, a fifteenth floor dwelling looking towards central London. The host was Peter Mackenzie, an old school friend of George from Glasgow who was now living the high life as a 'City Banker'. George had introduced me to Peter as his wife...mainly because we both had the same last name and Peter didn't know that George had a sister.

We'd only gone to the party because we had to fly out of London airport at ridiculous o'clock in the morning on a training exercise on the Island of Malta so George had accepted the party invitation. George had become overly amorous after watching a dozen scantily clad women flirting with all and sundry, the bedrooms had all been taken and George had dragged me onto his lap in the kitchen on an old dining chair. He'd pulled me down facing him with my legs straddling his hips and he'd buried his bone even though there were people all around us. I had fortunately worn a mid length summer dress to the party so my dress covered what George and I were doing from the other party goers.

Peter had just taken a fresh bottle of fizzy wine from his fridge when George's phone beeped to tell him he had a message. George's mobile phone wasn't used frivolously or socially, it was all business and when my phone beeped six milliseconds later we knew it was a call to arms. Peter saw George check his phone and I checked mine, "Oh...matching phones and screensavers...sure sign you two haven't been married long.

George eased me up and off of his cock, he closed his zip and I jumped off his lap.

"Sorry Peter mate...problem at the airport, we've got to go and check on a problem with our baggage."

George shook Peters hand and thanked him for the invitation to the party and there was a promise of keeping in touch in the future. I kissed Peter on his cheek and gave him a sweet smile as we walked out of the flat.

I called the lift while George checked in with command.

"Yes...okay...conference room two, New Scotland Yard...I'll be there in fifteen minutes...Vicky's with me right now, we'll travel together."

It was a mad dash across London, all traffic lights were ignored, it was fortunate that it was so late at night and there was little traffic in our way. At New Scotland Yard we both flashed our credentials to get past the desk sergeant. Gold Commander was already in the conference room. There was a pin board against one wall, thirty, eight by ten photographs pinned to the board, six were crossed through with red marker pen, I recognised three of the men in the photographs. Delta troupe had lifted six men, three had gone to court in the UK and three had been sent on a long holiday in the sun, ninety miles south of Florida.

The thirty people on the pin board were all members of a far right, neo-Nazi group called National Action. The group had been banned in the UK some years earlier and some members had fled to America for a while where they caused trouble before disappearing for a year only to surface back in England where they were caught planning an act of terrorism.

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The room slowly filled with other members of the SAS who were flown in from all over the country for our briefing.

"Our intelligence is that following today's heavy sentences handed down to the three members of the National Action Group, the rest of the group are planning a major action and we've got whispers of two possible targets, one possibility is Westminster, there was a hint of a bomb being driven across Westminster Bridge but earlier today we got two more snippets, one was a mention of a bus and a time of three fifteen to three thirty tomorrow...sorry, this afternoon now as it's past midnight."

George chipped in with, "What about the second target sir?"

"That is less clear but as three of their members have been shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, we believe that the second target could have been an American asset, possibly their embassy here in London or an American business office in London."

I'd studied the photographs of the twenty four members of the group that were still at large in the UK. I wouldn't expect to see any of the people but I needed to familiarise myself with the names assigned, from X-ray One to Twenty-four, twenty one men and three women. As a communications officer with the SAS I could drive the Range Rover, I could drop the operatives off at their various bus stops and then park up and manage the network between my four troupers and Gold Commander and if everything went well, I'd just drive around and pick them all up again to drive them and their kit to the heliport for their hop home.

At two o'clock in the morning we all moved out, rooms had been found in three local hotels so that we could all get a few hours sleep before we went into action. My room was next to George's, I had a twin bedroom with White One, Gail, the woman who had been George's one time girlfriend, and George was in a double bedroom, sharing with Mark, sharing a room as well as a double bed. Slipping next door was Gail's idea to have a little party in the room next door. Facing potential death in a few hours time certainly seemed to excite men...a lot. Gail went straight for George so I made do with Mark, not my first tumble with Mark but I would have preferred screwing George. We changed partners twice before we all fell asleep in one double bed together.

We had one more fuck before a late breakfast and set off to work, as this could have been George's last fuck, I made sure that I beat Gail to him.

I was parked in a pay and display, waiting for the call to pick my group up when I spotted an unexpected bus. It wasn't the traditional red double decker bus that London was famous for, it was a single decker, still bright red though and its destination blind said that it was running to Saint James's Park. George had caught the bus for that service five minutes earlier so we had an additional bus to the time table that we didn't have a trouper to cover so I had to act fast. There was traffic on the radio network; White One was talking to one of her group who had just found a suspicious vehicle close to the American Embassy, it was a delivery van full of LPG tanks, that was suspicious enough in the centre of London but there were wires visible through the window as well and what looked like a mobile phone strapped to the side of one of the tanks.

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I didn't have a choice really; I just had to hope that there was some kind of weapon in the Range Rover and that the extra bus didn't have a terrorist sitting on it with a bomb strapped to his chest. I found a screwdriver in a toolbox in the back of the car, grabbed it and ran for the bus.

Ray spoke to me and brought me back to the moment, "I said...how are you holding up?"

"I'm losing the feeling in my thumb a little but I'm okay for the moment."

We were just passing the south-east corner of the Parliament building and even though the public had all been cleared away from the area, the police officer who guarded the main entrance door into the building was still standing stoically at his post...he was well within the blast radius of the bomb that I was fighting to keep inert.

Great George Street was a one way street and not in our direction so the road layout made it impossible to go straight on, the barrios were designed to force traffic to turn left. The police car escorting us managed to slip through a gap that was left for pedestrians to cross the road, Bob managed to hit four items of street furniture trying to follow the police car, shaking me and my dead friend like a dog shaking a bone. The jolt was so violent that it threw Ray onto his arse on the floor of the bus.

Because of his protective suit it took him until we reached Birdcage Walk before he got back onto his feet. I could see George twenty yards away, there was a footpath running into Saint James's Park and George was signalling for Bob to turn right into the park...hand signals because once again, our radio network couldn't be patched through to the bomb disposal guys. The gap in the trees at ground level was wide enough for the bus but at roof height the branches weren't so accommodating and it was a struggle and a shake to get the bus away from the road.

I sat there while Ray and Bob worked together to carefully pull twenty detonators out of the ten blocks of plastic explosives and then Ray carefully removed each block and handed them to Bob to get them off the bus and away from the detonators. I was still in danger even though the explosives had been removed; twenty detonators going off at the same time would have messed up the inside of the bus for at least ten feet.