Knight’s efforts were hampered by the announcement of the silver-medal award to Great Britain. That sent the host-country crowd up on its feet, clapping, whistling and catcalling. Several lads at the north end of the arena unfurled large Union Jack flags and waved them about wildly, further obscuring Knight’s view.
The flags were still waving when the Chinese team was called to the high spot on the podium. Knight temporarily abandoned the search and looked for the Chinese coaches.
Ping and Wu stood off to the side of the floor-exercise mat beside a short, stocky Chinese woman in her fifties.
‘Who is she?’ Knight asked one of the men manning the video station.
He looked and replied, ‘Win Bo Lee. Chairman of the Chinese Gymnastics Association. Bigwig.’
Knight kept his binoculars on Ping and Wu as the Chinese national anthem began and the country’s red flag started to rise. He was expecting an emotional outpouring from the Chinese head coach.
To his surprise, however, he thought Ping looked oddly sombre for a man whose team had just won its Olympic event. Ping was looking at the ground and rubbing the back of his neck, not up at the Chinese flag as it reached the arena rafters.
Knight was about to turn his binoculars north again to look for the two women when Win Bo Lee suddenly wobbled on her feet as if she were dizzy. The assistant coach, Wu, caught the CGA chairman by the elbow and steadied her.
The older woman wiped at her nose and looked at her finger. She appeared alarmed and said something to An Wu.
But then Knight’s attention caught jerky movement beside the older woman. As the last few bars of the Chinese national anthem played, Ping lurched up onto the floor-exercise mat. The victorious head coach staggered across the spring-loaded floor toward the podium, his left hand clutching his throat, and his right reaching out to his triumphant team as if they were rope and he was drowning.
The anthem ended. The Chinese girls looked down from the flag, tears flowing down their cheeks, only to see their agonised coach trip and sprawl onto the mat in front of them.
Several girls started to scream.
Even from halfway across the arena, Knight could see the blood dribbling from Ping’s mouth and nose.
Chapter 62
BEFORE PARAMEDICS COULD reach the fallen coach, Win Bo Lee complained hysterically of sudden blindness before collapsing with blood seeping from her mouth, eyes, nose, and ears.
The fans began to grasp what was happening and shouts and cries of disbelief and fear pierced the arena. Many started grabbing their things and heading towards the exits.
Up in the arena’s security pod, Knight knew that An Wu, the assistant coach, was in mortal danger, but he forced his attention away from the drama developing on the arena floor to watch the camera feeds showing the walkway where the two women had entered the arena. The men manning the security station were inundated with radio traffic.
One of them suddenly roared, ‘We’ve got an explosion immediately south-east of the venue on the riverbank! River Police responding!’
Thank God no one heard the bomb inside the arena, because more fans were now moving towards the exits and would have caused a stampede. An Wu dropped to the floor suddenly, bleeding also and adding to the building terror.
And then, right there on the nearest screen on the security console, Knight spotted the sandy blonde and the redhead leaving the north arena along with a steady flow of jittery sports fans.
Though he could not make out their faces, the redhead was definitely limping. ‘It’s her!’ Knight shouted.
The men monitoring the security station barely glanced at him as they frantically tried to respond to questions flying at them over radios from all over the arena. Realising they were being overcome by the rapid pace of developments, Knight bolted for the door to the security pod, wrenched it open and started pushing though the shocked crowds, hoping to intercept the women.
But which way had they gone? East or west?
Knight decided they’d head for the exit closest to transportation, and therefore ran down the west hallway, searching among the stream of people coming at him until he heard Jack Morgan shout, ‘Knight!’
He glanced to his right and saw Private’s owner hustling out of the inner arena.
‘I’ve got them!’ Knight cried. ‘Two women, a sandy blonde and a redhead. She’s limping! Call Lancer. Have him seal the perimeter.’
Jack ran with him, trying to use his phone while weaving through the crowd that was trying to leave.
‘Damn it!’ Jack grunted. ‘They’re jamming mobile traffic!’
‘Then it’s up to us,’ Knight said and ran faster, determined that the two women would not get away.
In moments they reached the section of the north hallway he’d watched on camera. There was no way they could have got past him, Knight thought, cursing himself for not taking the east passage. But then, suddenly, he caught a glimpse of them several hundred feet ahead: two women going out through a fire-exit door.
‘Got them!’ Knight roared, holding his badge up and yanking out his Beretta. He shot twice into the ceiling, and bellowed, ‘Everyone down!’
It was as if Moses had parted the Red Sea. Olympic fans began diving to the cement floor and trying to shield themselves from Knight and Jack who sprinted towards the fire-escape door. And that was when Knight understood.
‘They’re going for the river!’ he cried. ‘They set off a bomb as a diversion to pull the River Police away from the arena!’
Then the lights flickered and died, throwing the entire gymnastics venue into pitch darkness.
Chapter 63
KNIGHT SKIDDED TO a halt in the blackness, feeling as if he was tottering at the edge of a cliff and struck with vertigo. People were screaming everywhere around him as he dug out a penlight on the key chain he always carried. He snapped it on just as battery-powered red emergency lights started to glow.
He and Jack sprinted the last seventy feet to the fire-escape door and tried to shoulder it open. Locked. Knight shot out the lock, provoking new chaos among the terrified fans, but the door flew open when they kicked it.
They hurtled down the fire-escape stairs and found themselves above the arena’s back area, which was clogged with media production trucks and other support vehicles for the venue. Red lights had gone on here as well, but Knight could not spot the pair of escaping women at first because there were so many people moving around below them, shouting, demanding to know what had happened.
Then he saw them, disappearing through an open door at the north-east end of the arena. Knight barrelled down the staircase, dodged past irate broadcast personnel, and spotted a security guard standing at the exit.
He showed his badge and gasped, ‘Two women. Where did they go?’
The guard looked at him in confusion. ‘What women? I was—’
Knight pushed past him and ran outside. Every light at the north end of the peninsula was dead, but thunder boomed and lightning cracked all around, giving them flashes of flickering vision.
The unseasonal fog swirled. Rain was pelting down. Knight had to throw up a forearm to shield his eyes. When the next flashes of lightning came, he peered along the nine-foot chain-link fence that separated the arena from a path along the Thames that led east and south to the river-bus pier.
The sandy-blonde Fury was crouched on the ground on the other side of the fence. The redhead had cleared the top and was climbing down.
Knight raised his gun, but it all went dark again and his penlight was no match for the night and the storm.