A Gentleman's Game Read Free

himself as he appeared to them, moving with precision and grace, and he felt an indescribable elation.
    He shot the girl first.
    “Get out!” he screamed. “Get into the next car!”
    Then he shot the boy, and then pivoted and shot the middle-aged man surging off a nearby bench, trying to reach him. The motion of the train and the man’s own momentum carried him forward, and as the man’s body slid to a stop by his feet, he stepped aside, moving his sights across terrified faces, still shouting at them.
    “Now!” he screamed. “Get out!” And to urge them, like cattle, he fired again, and again, and there was screaming now, and the passengers were scrambling over each other, pulling on one another to make for the door at the far end of the car. He fired into them, hitting a woman he thought was moving too slowly.
    The car emptied, and the train was still swaying, speeding toward the station.
    He turned to the closed-circuit camera in the corner above him and put a bullet into it, knowing that it had already witnessed what he had done. If all was according to plan, the conductor was already contacting the station, and the station, in turn, had begun its emergency response. The evacuation would have begun, the police been notified, Armed Response Units dispatched.
    All to plan.
    With his free hand, he reached into the backpack and removed the first bottle, turning and throwing it down the length of the carriage. It shattered on a metal handrail, glass bursting, petrol splashing, its scent sudden and almost sweet. He took the second bottle and threw it against the conductor’s door, where it smashed. Petrol spattered on his pants and arms, sloshed across the floor, saturating the clothes of the wounded man at his feet.
    He heard the door from the adjoining carriage open, and he fired without looking, not caring who, or even if, he hit. The gun was almost empty, but the gun had never been the weapon, only a tool. Even the petrol was only a tool.
    As he had been taught, he was the weapon.
    He reached into the backpack a final time for the box of matches. He tucked the pistol into his pants and opened the box quickly. The door at the far end opened again, and he knew they were coming to stop him, seeing this moment as their opportunity, or perhaps realizing what would happen next. He fumbled the matchbox in his excitement, the wooden sticks spilling onto the floor. He heard cursing and shouting, but it didn’t matter, he had a match in his hand now, and with a stroke it was alive, and he let it fall.
    The air around him moved, heated, and he saw flame race over the floor of the car, eating the petrol, taking purchase, growing hotter. The man at his feet made a noise as he caught on fire, and he glanced down to see that his own clothes had also caught, felt the fire climbing his body. He looked down the length of the carriage, saw that the flames now held the others at bay, felt the flames sear his skin as his shirt caught.
    From the corner of his eye, he saw the blackness of the tunnel open to the harsh light of the station.
    He pulled the gun from his waist, put the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
    •
    It happened again three minutes later, on the Bakerloo Line, as the train pulled into Piccadilly Circus.
    •
    And again, seven minutes after that, on the Northern Line, at King’s Cross.
    •
    When the final numbers were in, the death toll stood at three hundred and seventy-two. Very few of these fatalities came from direct contact with the terrorists, all three of whom had used essentially the same technique: the gun as the instrument of terror, to empty the car and to buy time; the petrol as the primary mechanism of attack, to set the trains aflame and to force them to stop on the tracks.
    As anticipated, the Underground suffered from not one but two weaknesses, and the terrorists had exploited both. The first was that, at any given time on the tube, there were more trains in motion than there were