The Last Bike Ride - Chapter 3/15

Chapter 3

He didn’t know how long his eyes had been glued to the incredible sight in the distance, about 30 miles away, but Steve now found himself shaking with fear and the cold.

He had been oblivious to the noise around him, but it now was very apparent. Some, like him, had survived the crash and had been able to join him behind the barrier and were appealing to their various gods and other abstract distant help; others were trapped in their vehicles, screaming for help which probably wasn’t going to arrive in time, if at all.

Steve looked at his van, jammed at the front between the crash barrier and a car on the right. The back doors had been badly damaged and seemed unlikely to open, but the side-loading door looked OK, and he knew the passenger’s door had opened enough to let him out earlier. He now opened it again and reached in and grabbed his rucksack and took his mobile phone from its holder.

There was no phone signal. The pulse of the blast had damaged most radio signals, but they would stabilise soon.

He opened the loading door and looked at his bike strapped inside. Since this crisis had begun there had been an expectancy of some form of terrorist attack in London. He hadn’t wanted to be caught out again as he had been a few years earlier when the police ordered everyone to evacuate a terrorist-threatened street in the City. For the last month he had kept the bike in the van in case of having to make another evacuation during his journey.

Steve decided to cycle home.

First, he rummaged through a box in the back of the van where he kept some odd clothing and found his tracksuit bottoms and some short fleece gloves. His steel-protected trainers were going to be awkward in the bike’s toe-clips but he had no alternative. He then unlashed his bike and gave it a quick check under the van interior light and lifted it out on to the road.

He put his rucksack on and made his way across to the central reservation to avoid the carnage that had formed behind. Before he got to the barrier, an arm shot out from the smashed window of a very badly damaged Fiat.

“Help us … please, please!” cried a woman from inside.

He could make out her crushed legs and what looked like the gear-stick imbedded in her abdomen, and then he noticed what could have been her daughter, maybe about 10 years-old, clearly dead with her head smashed against the back of the woman’s seat. There was nothing he could do.

“I… I’m sorry, I can’t help you … I would if I could,” was all he could manage, pulled his arm from her grip, and walked off, trying not to throw up.

He found himself crunching through broken glass and bits of metal and plastic and was glad of the protection in his soles.

A path had been cleared by the artic-truck through the bushes of the wide central reservation and he carried his bike over it. The sight on the other side was just as appalling; with one car reduced to an unrecognisable pile against the barrier and the carriageway just as blocked as on the other side.

To the south lay three lanes of empty motorway. Steve got on his bike, struggled with nerves to get into the plastic toe-clips, and then started his bike ride into the darkness ahead.

Once he was clear of the panic and noise his thoughts turned to home.

Over the previous years, the unsocial hours of that job meant that he had grown apart from his wife, as many indeed do. Their children, their four daughters, who had become used to his absence, had also been affected. Those years lost couldn’t be claimed back, and they were important years while the girls were growing up.

Life had been so different back in late 1999 when Steve and Juliette decided to move away from Kent to find a better environment to bring the girls up in.

Steve had often talked with their family doctor in Kent about the large number of child respiratory cases coming into his surgery. What convinced Steve that the time to move had arrived was when he walked into town with Florence one clear winter’s evening and they could both smell the fuel being dumped from planes stacking for Gatwick airport.

They had found a house just a few minutes walk from Bournemouth’s popular beach, and they had been able to walk the girls to the primary school, passing the cliff-top each morning so that they could see the ‘polar bear’ shape that appeared to be set into the cliffs near the Needles, the famous landmark over on the Isle of Wight.

When the girls were a bit older they were able to walk into the town centre. The New Forest was not far away to the east, and the Purbecks were a short drive to the west with a crossing on the chain ferry. If ever there was snow in the area the Purbeck Hills stood out across the bay with their white tops either merging into the white cloud above or standing out brilliantly against a blue sky.

The Isle of Purbeck became an easy, usually drunken, bike ride away when Steve went over on the Sandbanks ferry with a group of friends for a beer or two. It had always been a mad dash from their usual destination, the Bankes Arms, back to the ferry, but they had never missed it. The thought of the twenty-mile alternative made sure of that.

The Millennium of 2000 was built up to be the new dawn of fresh opportunities, although some were determined to dampen people’s spirits with reports of a millennium ‘bug’ which would crash computers world-wide, bringing down planes everywhere, and wiping out the world’s stock markets.

Most ignored that as they just wanted, as Prince sang, to ‘party like it was 1999’. Steve and the family, with some friends, did just that until about 4am. Steve still managed to get up at 6 to go for a bike ride along the sea-front promenade, hoping to see the sun rise over this ‘new dawn’. But it was cloudy. That hadn’t stopped people standing and staring out to sea, perhaps hoping to see the sun break through, or something more profound.

Why should that morning have changed anything? After all, 1/1/2000 was just a number invented by man and associated to the birth of some mythical miracle-worker. It was just another new day. The abiding memory for Steve of that early bike ride was not some spiritual revelation, but the smell of bacon from those who had stayed up all night at their beach huts and were now cooking breakfast.

- § -

Steve stopped and tried his phone again. There was a signal this time, and Juliette answered.

“I might not have a signal for too long, so just listen. I think London’s been hit with a nuclear bomb. I saw the mushroom cloud and there was just carnage after that. I managed to get the bike out and I’m going to ride back down the motorway to you. It’s probably about 80 miles. Just give the girls a big hug from me and tell them I love them so much. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me, but I’ll try and call again. I love you.”

She was crying when he hung up. He did love her, but not in the way he had done when they had decided to get married and for a few years after that. That love hadn’t lasted, but was replaced by the love for her as the mother of his children. Tonight though, he did care, and did want to be in her arms.

For now, however, there was just the small matter of an 80-mile bike ride.

- § -

At the same time, deep in the North Atlantic around Iceland, John Mortimer was in the tense control room on board HMS Victorius, one of the four submarines that make up the UK’s nuclear strike fleet.

The message,

‘RED ALERT! NUCLEAR ATTACK ON LONDON. NO FURTHER ATTACKS REPORTED’,

which flashed across the communications screen, had been received from his Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Jerome Walker-Greene.

He tried to keep everyone calm, including himself, but those years of training can’t stop someone being human.

“Have we received authentication?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

He was thinking how much things could change within just a few minutes. The message had come through as he walked into the control room, having spent the last half-hour catching up with the cards his children had given to him when he left home. That was the first bit of free time he had found to himself since leaving dock in Faslane, UK’s nuclear submarine base on Gare Loch, in Scotland, on this latest tour of duty.

His eight year-old son, Jack, had drawn a submarine on his card and, as usual, had started it, not with ‘Daddy’ as he called him at home, but with ‘Captain John Mortimer’. His twin six year-old girls, Emily and Charlotte, had also given him a card, with a drawing each on it, and written in surprisingly good handwriting for their age and very similar to that of his wife, Bev!

As he read them, he glanced at the time and thought about the children tucked up in bed and Bev probably tucked into yet another book. She had always had a large collection of books, but since they moved into their house, which had much more room than they had been used to, she was determined to fill any wall space with shelves, and those shelves with books.

Perranporth had been a good choice of place to settle in, and in the seven years since the move they had become very attached to everything about it – the house, the school, and the small town, which John had visited one weekend some years before when he was stationed at Devonport. Bev had never settled in their cottage in Garelochead, across the Loch from the base, but now she was happy in Cornwall.

They had only got the house finished to their taste in the summer and had spent a great three weeks together, most of it in front of a blazing log fire in this very cold spell.

“Sir, Command has confirmed a nuclear attack on London. No orders from them.”

“OK, sound the call and patch me through the boat.”

The warning siren woke everyone who was asleep and then the Captain started speaking on the tannoy that sounded throughout the vessel.

“Gentleman, we have just received confirmation that there has been a nuclear attack on London. There are no more details but that will change very soon.
We have to assume that we are at war. We have trained together well over the years, so I have every confidence in you. Just have confidence in yourselves and we will be able to do everything asked of us.
Good luck gentlemen.”

Lt. Cmdr. George Williams came into the Control Room, manned now by a highly alert and well-trained team, all dressed in their anti-flash suits. He had been in a deep sleep and having a strange dream when the siren brought him round. As second-in-command he was the only other person privy to certain information. Captain Mortimer had chosen him five years ago when he was given this command. They had known each other from their days in Dartmouth Naval College and each knew that they could trust each other in any situation.

The authentication message came through, but this time with the added,

‘UNICORN STATUS’.

Known only to the Captain and George, the Unicorn status meant that the Prime Minister and his chosen wartime deputies had been killed.

“OK, George, get the team together.”

Since their early days in training John Mortimer had doubts about the procedures on board in the event of a live situation and had confided with George Williams on how he would handle things if he ever got a command of a nuclear-strike sub. His doubts centred around any of the crew breaking down if things became ‘real’ and threatened the operation. They recruited four of the best crewmen they knew and had kept them together over the years.

This team was positioned now to offer all-round vision and protection to enable Captain Mortimer and his officers to perform whatever they had to do. Anyone breaking down with the stress of the situation would be taken away by this team. They also had the authority to shoot anyone who tried to attack the Captain or his Number 2.

The Commander-in-Chief now ordered the Captain to open the Letter of Last Resort.

John Mortimer acknowledged this latest message and walked over to the safe. He was to be the first person to have read one of these letters other than their authors, every newly-elected Prime Minister since the nuclear age began. Even the cockiest of Prime Ministers would be brought down to the reality of what they had taken on when they were given the task of writing this letter, shortly after entering Number 10 through the famous black front door, on their first day in office.

Dear Captain,

By opening this letter you will know that I, and those entrusted by me in the government to take responsibility in the event of my being incapacitated, are now dead.
I know that your training over many years will have prepared you to some extent for this eventuality, but reality is different, and I can only imagine your thoughts at this moment.
I would ask you to liaise with the White House but the final decision is yours.
You have the future of our country, and possibly the world’s, in your hands, but I know I can trust you to do what is right.

Yours, PM

It seemed such a short note for such an important situation, but that was enough information for John to take in right now. As calm as he appeared outside, inside he was struggling to come to terms with this.

“OK, gents, we have been given the authority to take whatever action necessary. Firstly, we need more info. I need to talk directly with the Chief. Is there any traffic around?”

He needed to know that so that it was safe to briefly surface and get a radio link to the Admiral.

“It’s all clear, Captain. There’s been nothing around for hours now.”

“OK, let’s surface and hook up the radio link.”

The Captain looked around him and saw that everyone was completely on top of their game despite what they might be feeling.

He was not looking forward to talking with his Commander-in-Chief. Walker-Greene had resented John and regarded him as the cause of his rise to the top being delayed following an incident in a sailing regatta at the Dartmouth where John had been under Walker-Greene’s command when the latter had been a mere captain.

Walker-Greene desperately wanted to win a sailing race in which he was teamed up with John and Harry, another Academy trainee. Walker-Greene was no more than an adequate sailor but always made sure he had a good sailor in his boat, and with John he knew had one of the best.

It didn’t stop him making a terrible move, despite John’s advice, where he lost control of the boom which swung round and struck Harry, knocking him both out and into the sea.

“I’ll swing it round and try to get him!” shouted John.

“Don’t be daft. The rescue boat will pick him up.”

“He’s been knocked out. He’ll be dead before they can get to him.”

“Leave him. We’ve got a race to win!”

Not bothering to point out that they would be disqualified anyway without all three on board, John took control and swung the boat around.

“Sailor, turn this back around and get us to the line!”

“Shut up, sir! We’re going to save Harry!”

“You don’t know how much trouble you’re in now, Mortimer.”

Only the most skilled sailor can get a boat back around to where someone has fallen overboard, but John made it and got a line to Harry who had come round but could only hold the line John had thrown out. John dived in and managed to push Harry back into the boat.

Walker-Greene was silently fuming as John got them back ashore.

John’s actions had indeed saved Harry from drowning but Walker-Greene refused to acknowledge his actions and, in fact, had tried to block John’s progress through the ranks despite him clearly being a great sailor and a natural leader, the type the Navy needs.

But the likes of Walker-Greene would prefer the status quo of his class remaining in control. He had had a typical career path for the son of an Admiral – public school, top university, and a cushy path to the top, despite showing absolutely no ability, or any aptitude for command.

But now John took up the phone to talk to his Commander-in-Chief with his personal thoughts as far removed as possible.

“Mortimer, what are you doing on the surface?” balled Walker-Greene.

“Sir, I need to talk to you directly before we dive again. Do we know who’s attacked us?”

“No, we don’t know yet, but the White House are pretty sure it’s from Russia, and they’re pushing us for an appropriate response.”

“Sir, I’m not launching anything, let alone a nuclear attack, just because some trigger-happy American general thinks he knows where the attack has come from.”

“Listen clearly, Captain, we’ll do what the Americans say once we have confirmation.”

“No, you listen, sir,” this time willing to disobey his superior with less concern about the consequences than he had in the sailing boat in Dartmouth, but with just as much conviction of his actions as he had back then,

“the PM’s letter gives me the final decision. We’re only to liaise with the White House, not roll over for them. We’re going to dive now and await confirmation. Over.”