INVASION: UPRISING (Invasion Series Book 3)

by Dc Alden

  Timmy stared at his beige loafers like a guilty schoolboy. Victor was the first to join the dots. He crushed out his cigar and leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘You bloody idiot!’ he spluttered. ‘You said you’d ended it months ago!’

  ‘This isn’t a fling, Victor. We’re in love—’

  ‘Oh please.’ The judge snorted, reaching for the brandy. He poured himself a large measure and swallowed half in a single gulp.

  Edith felt a shiver of fear prickle the back of her neck. ‘I warned you, Timmy,’ she said, still struggling with what she’d heard. ‘You promised me it was over.’

  Timmy jabbed his chest. ‘He came to me, Edie! I tried to break it off, but he was insistent. We meet once a week, that’s it. No phone calls, no emails, nothing. We’re being careful, I swear. He knows what he’s doing.’

  ‘Idiot!’ Victor slumped back in his chair, the red leather creaking beneath his ample backside. ‘I should flog you myself!’

  ‘You’re overreacting—’

  ‘Enough.’

  Edith sat down, her legs feeling dangerously hollow. It was several moments before she could think clearly. ‘Timmy, you are my oldest friend, and I love you dearly, but Victor is right. You’ve been very foolish. Faisal is an intelligence officer at the caliphate’s military headquarters. When your affair is discovered – not if – you will be rigorously interrogated, and before you are sent to the gallows, you’ll have told them who knew about your illegal affair. Anyone with prior knowledge of that relationship will also suffer the consequences. It will be the end of us, do you understand?’

  ‘We couldn’t help ourselves,’ Timmy explained, gulping his brandy. ‘This is the real thing, Edie.’

  ‘Spare me.’ Victor scowled.

  Edith held up a hand for silence. ‘You said you had important news,’ she pressed.

  Timmy nodded. ‘Something Faisal told me, and it’s pretty bloody scary. Long story short, Wazir fired a nuke across the border into China. Thankfully they didn’t retaliate—’

  ‘He did what?’ Victor’s face paled in the firelight.

  ‘When?’ Edith asked him.

  ‘A few weeks ago. Wazir pleaded ignorance but Beijing launched a retaliatory strike on Islamabad – non-nuclear, thank God – but tens of thousands have been killed on both sides. The Chinese are building up a significant force on the Kashmir border and Wazir is sending an army east. They’re pulling troops in from all over the caliphate. Faisal might be shipped abroad.’

  ‘Never mind your bloody boyfriend!’ Victor snapped. ‘Are we in any danger, here in the UK?’

  The art historian swallowed another mouthful of brandy. ‘I don’t know. He never said.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to ask?’ Victor shook his head. ‘War with China will cause Wazir a lot of problems. He’s got all sorts of deals with Beijing; oil-for-weapons, precious metals, technology, you name it. This is going to throw a serious spanner in Baghdad’s works.’

  Edith opened her mouth to respond, then caught a movement in the shadows across the room. She snapped to her feet. ‘Bertie? I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘You r-r-rang for me, Lady Edith?’ Bertie spoke with an occasional stammer, a legacy of the beating he’d received that day. Continued employment was something she felt she owed him, and he addressed her as Lady Edith, which she liked to hear, especially when she entertained.

  ‘Of course I did.’ She tutted. ‘My guests are leaving. Please show them out.’

  Victor and Timmy stood and finished their drinks. They took it in turn to peck Edith’s flushed cheeks.

  ‘We shall reconvene soon, in the next few days,’ she muttered gravely.

  The men left the room, and Edith was finally alone. She picked up the brandy bottle then set it down again. It was too late, and she was too tired. She would sleep, allow her subconscious to process Timmy’s troubling news. She was no expert, but she knew China had a massive army and thousands of nuclear weapons. This could go very bad, very quickly. If that should happen, an exit strategy would be required. She would consider her options, talk to Victor. Alone.

  As for Timmy, the man was a foolish romantic, an endearing quality in pre-liberation London, but tonight she realised he’d become a selfish, dangerous liability, and he’d placed them all in serious danger. For that, there would be consequences.

  Edith cursed his name as she stared into the dying fire.

  2

  Irish Eyes

  Eddie Novak knelt behind the rough stone church wall, his lungs heaving, M27 jammed into his shoulder, eye pressed against the optics, the warm barrel sweeping the unlit houses across the road.

  Digger and Steve knelt either side of him, catching their breath, watching the ground ahead. Steve was swapping out a mag and Digger was still bitching about losing his NVGs. Eddie’s were gone too. Around them, the rest of Nine Platoon was spread out along the wall or lying dead in the field they’d just sprinted across. The Hajis who’d opened up on them were dead too, shredded by half a dozen grenades and a couple of hundred rounds. Their remains were somewhere behind them, scattered across the churchyard graves.

  No longer a place of peace and reflection, Eddie knew. The church’s stained-glass windows were gone, the door blackened and twisted off its hinges. Old wounds, inflicted long before the Second Massachusetts Battalion had arrived. It wasn’t the first they’d seen. Nor the last, probably.

  Lance-Corporal Rab McAllister loomed out of the darkness and dropped to his knee.

  ‘Gaffer’s down,’ he told them. ‘Took a round through the leg. He’ll live, but he’s out of the game.’ He pulled a small Tac-Tablet from his webbing and shielded the light. He ran a gloved finger across the screen. ‘Bravo Company has cut the town off from the north, and Alpha’s got all routes south sewn up tighter than a nun’s chuff. They’re holding Fire Support in reserve until we get an idea of opposition, but the drones are seeing a stampede down to the harbour. Hajis are on the run, but there’ll be a few martyrs amongst them, so don’t get complacent. You see one, send him to Paradise, even if he’s waving a white flag.’ He tapped the tablet screen. ‘We’re moving up to the corner of the high street. We’ll hold there and link up with Bravo, then we’re going house to house.’

  ‘What about the Hajis?’ Digger asked him.

  ‘Ain’t you done enough killing?’

  Digger winked. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Lunatic,’ Mac muttered. He jammed the tablet into his assault pack and gripped his M27. ‘Right, prepare to move.’

  Then he was gone, working his way down the wall. Eddie watched the road ahead, the houses that flanked it, the potential dangers. The windows were dark, the curtains open. Some of them had white sheets and Irish Tricolours hanging from them. Could be a ruse, Eddie thought. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d lost people that way, but as a designated marksman, Digger would cover their advance with his M38. Anyone showed themselves in those windows, the youngest member of Nine Platoon would end them.

  Mac’s voice hissed over the radio. ‘Nine Section, move!’

  Eddie scrambled over the wall and moved fast and low, rifle up, eyes moving left and right. He was aware of the others behind him, their quick breaths, the familiar rattle and rasp of clothing and equipment. The houses loomed on either side. Eddie led Three Section along the wall towards the corner of the high street. He stopped short, mindful of booby-traps. His eyes searched the pavement ahead, the corner of the street. There were no road signs or lamp posts, nothing to secure a tripwire to. He crept up to the corner, crouching low, and looked to his left. Whatever shops and businesses they had in this town had been ransacked. The high street was littered with all sorts of debris, clothes, furniture, books, papers, broken glass. A couple of shops were burning fiercely, the smoke partly obscuring the road to the north. There were bodies lying out there too, civilians. That was nothing new either. Two klicks back they’d discovered a ditch full of corpses, all locals, all men, some of them young l
ads. It was hard to deal with sometimes—

  Movement.

  He squinted through his ACOG, saw armed men moving down the high street towards their position. Then he saw the faint glow of their IR flag patches and knew it was the boys from Alpha Company, moving south. He watched them pause 50 metres away and Eddie signalled with his hand, saw his gesture acknowledged. He called it in over the net.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ Digger muttered, re-joining them.

  ‘Take it easy, nipper,’ Steve cautioned. ‘No sense in getting killed, not now.’

  Not this close to the end, Eddie echoed silently. Not the end, he reminded himself, the end of the beginning. At least, that’s what older, wiser heads were saying.

  He heard boots on the road and glanced over his shoulder. What remained of Nine Platoon crouched against the wall behind him. Then he saw Mac moving up the line towards him. He crouched down next to Eddie, his breath ragged.

  ‘Strykers are inbound and Fire Support are moving up from the south. HQ wants the high street swept clean, so you’ll be clearing everything south of this position and east of the high street, got it?’ He slapped a hand on the wall they crouched against. ‘Start with this one and work your way south. Sections will leap-frog as you go. And watch for IEDs, got it?’

  ‘Roger that,’ the boys whispered.

  ‘We’re moving in zero-two minutes. Steve, launch the bug.’

  Mac disappeared back into the darkness. Steve swung his assault pack off his back and extracted the Black Hornet mini-drone from its padded pouch. Within seconds, the palm-sized drone was flying over their heads and disappearing around the corner.

  ‘Get in there, ya little beauty.’ Steve watched the mini-screen as he flew the tiny drone through the shattered shop window on the high street. ‘Downstairs is a mess, but it’s clear. No trip-wires, no targets. Going up…’ Another few seconds passed. ‘Jesus, I thought my house was small. Okay, looks clear.’

  Seconds later the drone was settling back on the pavement next to them. Steve packed it away. The order came a moment later.

  ‘Three Section, move up!’

  ‘Moving,’ Eddie responded, and then he was turning around the corner, gun sweeping the high street. In the darkness ahead, he heard a door crash open, and a dozen enemy troops bolted into the road, spraying wild rounds back up the street.

  ‘Contact!’

  Eddie fired as he moved. Fire, hit, switching target, fire, fire, hit, switch…

  Everyone else was firing too, suppressors coughing like a doctor’s waiting room in winter. Brass sang as it hit the road. Most of the Hajis went down hard. Others swerved the fusillade and disappeared around the bend in the high street.

  Eddie ducked into the first shop, a bakery, mashing pies and pastries beneath his boots. They cleared the ground floor, and Digger and Steve did the same upstairs. Back outside, they leap-frogged their way along the high street, clearing buildings as they went, reclaiming the real estate. Alpha Company were doing the same across the street. There were a lot of hand signals and voice chatter on the net, but no shouting and no gunfire. They found only two people, both middle-aged, both dead, lying behind the counter of a gift shop. The lady had a rosary clutched between her fingers. Both had been shot in the back of the head.

  When Digger saw them, he cursed and marched back outside.

  ‘Digger, wait!’

  Eddie saw him swing his M38 behind his back and pull his Sig pistol, heading for the Haji runners lying in the road. Some of them were still alive, moaning, twisting in agony, begging for mercy. Digger shot two of them before Eddie pulled him away.

  ‘Alpha Company OC is coming up behind us,’ he lied. ‘Move, go! Before he sees you.’

  Digger said nothing, just jammed his Sig home and grabbed his rifle. He’d been doing that a lot lately, killing in cold blood. The first time Eddie and Steve had tried to stop him, Digger had turned the gun on them. They’d left the kid alone after that.

  It took 30 minutes to clear the high street. Alpha and Bravo held their positions while Charlie Company moved down towards the harbour. Three Section took up position behind the wall overlooking the narrow road that curved down to the sea. It was shrouded in darkness, but they all heard the desperate shouts carried on the cold night air. The sound of panic, Eddie knew. Good.

  Then they heard something else; powerful diesel engines.

  ‘Recce Platoon,’ Steve observed, pointing. ‘Inbound, three o’clock.’

  Two 8-wheeled Stryker armoured vehicles charged out of the darkness to the south. They turned right onto the harbour road in a squeal of rubber, and almost immediately the lead Stryker opened fire, its 20-millimetre mini-gun lighting up the night. Eddie couldn’t see the targets but he could imagine the carnage. The other Stryker opened up too, their short, brilliant-white strobe bursts ripping the air. Then the vehicles moved out of sight, down to the harbour. The firing went on for several more minutes, and Eddie didn’t hear any return fire. That didn’t surprise him.

  The Strykers reappeared and rumbled past them along the high street. More troops from the Second Mass were pouring into the high street, most of them on foot, muddied and bloodied. Other than the small harbour, there was nothing special about the town of Bally Cross. It had no strategic importance, except for the Hajis, and the boats they could use to escape in. Now the place was ruined, scarred for life, along with the lives that lived here. Eddie thought about the couple in the gift shop, executed for nothing, probably. He wondered if they’d known their murderers, living as they had under caliphate rule for over two years. Maybe. In the end, it didn’t matter. They were still dead.

  Eddie heard Mac’s voice on the radio. The platoon, or what was left of it, double-timed it to the road junction above the harbour. Mac was waiting for them.

  ‘We’re securing this area. Eddie, Steve, Digger, get down to the water and see if anyone’s still alive. The rest of you, spread out and cover them.’

  ‘The Hajis could have gunboats out there, Skip,’ Steve said. ‘We won’t be able to see ‘em, not with our gear.’

  Mac scowled. ‘Yanks have got a missile team inbound. Should be here within the hour. That make you feel better? Or would ye like a hug and a big sloppy kiss too?’

  Steve grinned beneath the rim of his helmet. ‘I could do with a cuddle, but no tongues, mind.’

  ‘Move!’ Mac snarled.

  They doubled down the harbour road, keeping to the stone wall. There were no boats in the harbour, Eddie observed, none that would float again. The Stryker’s had seen to that, chewing the fishing vessels, pleasure cruisers, and wooden pontoons to pieces. Same for the Hajis. Limbs, heads, and torsos bobbed on the harbour’s dark, oily surface. It was carnage.

  Covered by the rest of the platoon, Eddie and the boys headed out along the harbour wall for another hundred metres until they could go no further. They got down on their stomachs and scanned the horizon. The sea pounded the harbour wall below them. More wreckage and bodies drifted through Eddie’s low-light scope.

  ‘Like shooting fish in a barrel,’ Steve muttered.

  ‘Lucky bastards,’ Digger said.

  Eddie turned to look at him. ‘Who?’

  ‘The guys on those mini-guns. I would’ve loved to chop them fuckers up.’

  ‘So go join Recce Platoon then,’ Steve told him.

  ‘I’ve tried. No deal.’

  ‘Stuck with us then, eh?’

  ‘For now,’ Digger grumbled, eye pressed to the scope of his M38 as he scanned the sea.

  Eddie did the same. The only thing visible were the white horses that galloped across the dark swell. Digger’s mental health worried him. He was the youngest in the platoon, just 18, and both him and his dad had joined up, but Barnes senior had been posted to the First Battalion, to split up the family members, just in case. Digger’s dad was on board a supply ship when it was struck by a hypersonic ballistic missile and blew like a nuke. The MV Barnard Fisher had been transporting thousands of tonnes
of ammunition, as well as men and vehicles. Of the handful of survivors, none of them was Digger’s dad. The kid had never been the same since.

  They’d tried to counsel him, even send him back home to New London, but Digger had refused, fooling the shrinks he was fit to serve. And he was, pretty much. Except for the killing. Eddie didn’t know what Digger’s personal body-count was, but it was more than the rest of the section combined. The kid was an assassin who operated on a hair-trigger. He’d also saved their lives more than once.

  The bitter wind howled, driving the waves onto the harbour wall and dumping spray all over them. Eddie stared into the darkness. The Welsh coast was out there somewhere, less than a hundred kilometres away. There was nothing to see, no distant lights, no slow, steady sweep of a lighthouse, but they were close now, closer than they’d ever been. Taking back Ireland had proved to be a long, bloody slog, but they’d made it this far. It wasn’t over yet, though, and Eddie told himself to stay sharp. He gave Digger a nudge.

  ‘See anything out there?’

  Digger twisted his more powerful 56-millimetre Leupold scope. He swept the sea for a moment, then his body stiffened. ‘Wait a minute…I’ve got something. Yep, it’s definitely a mermaid. Nice tits too. Ooh look, she’s waving—’

  ‘Bollocks to this,’ Steve swore, getting to his feet. ‘Come on, let’s go. We’re wasting our time here.’

  As they headed back to the harbour, Eddie felt the adrenaline draining from his system, leaving a crippling tiredness in its wake.

  ‘Anyone got any kickers? I’m out.’

  ‘Me too,’ Steve moaned. ‘I’m almost on my arse.’

  Digger glanced over his shoulder. ‘Stop whining. They’re pulling us back from the coast, anyway. In case the Hajis counter-attack with missiles.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ Eddie prayed it was true. He was flagging fast.

  ‘I overheard Mac talking to a couple of HQ bods. We’ll be gone before sun up. You girls’ll be able to get your beauty sleep after that.’