Free Dead Shot by USMC (Ret.) with Donald A. Davis Gunnery SGT. Jack Coughlin Page B

ECURITY AGENCIES WERE IN overdrive, for nothing could be allowed to mar the wedding or threaten the royals. The streets around BuckinghamPalace and St. Paul’s Cathedral were searched a dozen times, and officers were posted in every building along the route. Security cameras were everywhere, their little eyes probing and curious. Uniformed policemen from the boroughs were brought in for duty, and Scotland Yard’s Special Branch detectives threaded through the throng. British soldiers in combat gear were stationed in plain view.
    Tuesday was a national holiday in Great Britain, and about seven hundred thousand people were jammed into the parks near the palace—Kensington, Hyde, Green, and St. James’s. Each person had been searched before being allowed through the security cordon. The Royal Wedding Command Center in the Palace Gardens had been going nonstop for seventy-two hours before the ceremony and was not to stand down until William and Barbara left for their honeymoon at a private place unknown to the general public.
    Every cop in England was looking the wrong way.
     
    The wedding went off without a problem, and the royal couple signed the register after the ceremony and walked back down the red carpet, with Barbara needing help from her bridesmaids to maneuver the twenty-five-foot train of her antique lace and ivory silk gown. The prince and his smiling, radiantly beautiful bride stepped into sunshine amid nonstop cheers and hurrahs and got into a special open landau drawn by a matched team for the trip back to the palace, escorted by the glittering Horse Guards.
    Juba, in Belgium, watched the carriage depart and gave it a three-minute start through the adoring crowd. He held his cell phone in both hands. When he finally dialed a number, the call bounced off a satellite and into London. It caused a dart of electricity to pulse across the microscopic gap between two strips of copper, closing the circuit in the small bomb beneath the floorboard in the purple and white press van rented by the Italians. It was a crude device, but all he needed to generate an explosion from the C-4 to rupture the lead container.
    The explosion detonated the gas tank and caused a secondary eruption. The Edinburgh van tore apart as the blast peeled away its sidesand knocked over the antennas of several nearby trucks. Flying pieces of metal became deadly shrapnel, and all four members of the European technical crew and three passersby were killed. Although the unruffled BBC commentators, far from the scene, continued describing the parade, the explosion was clearly heard by thousands on the ground, and the plume of smoke in the rear of the media headquarters in Kensington Park was seen by millions of television viewers before the camera intentionally swung away.
    The horses pulling the landau of the prince and his new princess broke into a fast trot, and the mounted guard closed around them, sheathing their ceremonial swords and pulling free the carbines attached to their saddles.
     
    Kimberly Drake was stunned. The unexpected explosion had smashed her against another truck, and she toppled to the ground, out of breath and dazed. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs just as the strong hands of Tom Lester, her cameraman, scooped her up.
    Tom Lester, a photojournalist for more than twenty years, had stepped over a lot of bodies in a couple of wars. Any explosion that did not kill him was someone else’s problem, but he had not seen one in London since the IRA had quieted down. He looked at his reporter and saw no blood. Just shock. He poured water into a cupped hand, wiped her face, and gave her a drink. That was enough tender loving care, and he shook her by the shoulder. Hard. “Wake the fuck up, Kim! Pull yourself together! A monster story just fell right on your lucky little head!” He turned to see the young engineer looking out of the doorway of their van. “Get back inside, Harold. Get us up live to Little Rock right now. Move,