by Dc Alden
‘Air assault, then.’
‘Too risky,’ Mac told him, sitting back down. ‘If we’re honest about it, it’s gonna take time to build up a big enough invasion force to crack this nut. Months, maybe even years.’
Steve pushed his mess tin to one side. ‘I can’t wait that long.’
‘You might have to. That’s the reality.’
Eddie winced. ‘I hate to say it, but we might not invade at all.’
All eyes turned to him. Mac glared. ‘I didn’t realise you’d been promoted to field fucking marshal, Novak.’
Digger laughed. Eddie didn’t blink. ‘England and Wales are living under caliphate rule, right? Buses and trains are running, people are going to work, shops and restaurants are open, they’ve got TV—’
‘Six state-run channels,’ Mac shot back. ‘Same for the Internet, closed network, no Wi-Fi. And definitely no porn. Must be a real hoot.’
Digger laughed again. Steve was looking worried. Eddie pushed on.
‘The cities are being cleaned up, and they’re rebuilding London, right? We’ve all seen the news.’
‘Get to the point, Novak.’
‘It’s simple; England and Wales are occupied like Europe was during World War Two. More than that, people have adjusted to life under caliphate rule. Whether we like it or not, peace has broken out down there. Do you really think Beecham will green-light another massive assault on the country? Drop Tomahawks on London? Risk untold collateral damage?’
‘Not a bad idea,’ Digger said. ‘Place is full of traitors, anyway.’
Eddie shook his head. ‘No mate, it’s full of frightened people, just keeping their heads down and praying it’ll all be over one day. And now it’s kicked off with the Chinese, I just can’t see Beecham risking it.’
Mac growled. ‘That’s bullshit. We took Ireland, didn’t we? No talk of collateral damage there.’
Eddie shrugged ‘Maybe there was, but the Irish were prepared to spill blood to get their country back, even if it meant their own. I don’t think we’re prepared to go down that same road.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Steve muttered. ‘The people I know, they see us coming over the frontier, they’ll rise up and fight.’
‘So will the hundreds of thousands who’ve come here since the invasion, not to mention the millions who were already here beforehand. You think they’ll all pack up and piss off? No chance. They’ll fight too, all of them.’ Eddie pointed off into the distance. ‘That frontier, that’s not just a defensive line, that’s a message. It says, we’re here to stay, so keep the fuck out.
Digger got to his feet. ‘Why bother sending us here, then? Why give us new NVGs, upgraded rifle optics, exoskeletons, a ton of other stuff? We all saw the armour at Prestwick. Tanks, APCs, mobile SAMs, hundreds of them. And thousands of troops—’
‘Landing every day,’ Mac confirmed.
‘That’s right. And now they’ve shipped us down here, closer to the border. We’re on that training area every other day doing live-fire exercises, combat drills, first aid, map reading, right? It’s Iceland all over again. They’re prepping us for something, no question.’
‘It might all be window dressing,’ Eddie said. ‘You know, political pressure. Force Baghdad to negotiate.’
Digger stared at him for a moment. ‘Negotiate what? In case you hadn’t noticed, they’ve conquered Europe. Why would they need to negotiate anything? You’re talking out of your arse, mate. You don’t know shit.’
Steve got to his feet, picked up his mess tins and walked out of the room. Eddie could feel Mac’s eyes boring into him.
‘Do us all a favour and keep your opinions to yourself, son.’
‘Yeah, you’ve upset him now,’ Digger added.
Eddie shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean to. I’m just trying to help him deal with it, that’s all.’
‘Nice job.’ Digger got up and left the room.
‘I’d better say something,’ Eddie said, feeling guilty.
‘Just leave ‘em to it, let the dust settle. It’s been a long day.’ Mac stood and stretched. ‘Right, I’m away for a shite and a shower. Alpha company is running security tonight, so we can all get a decent kip.’
Steve returned a few minutes later, his mess tins dripping water on the linoleum. Eddie half-smiled.
‘Take no notice of me, Steve. I’m just trying to work it all out, that’s all. I’m sorry.’
‘What you said makes sense though,’ Steve told him, stuffing his mess tins in his pack. ‘I guess if we build up a big enough force that’ll give Beecham some kind of political clout, right? So maybe they’ll get around the table, do a deal. Maybe I won’t have to go to the girls. Maybe they’ll come to me.’
Eddie offered him a tentative smile. ‘Stranger things have happened.’
‘No chance,’ Digger said, walking into the room. ‘They’ve been talking for three years and Baghdad ain’t listening. Sooner or later, we’re gonna go toe-to-toe. And when we do, they’re going down.’
Eddie and Steve shared a look.
Digger sat down and started stripping his M27.
At that moment, almost 5,000 miles away, an aircraft was being rolled out of a hangar at the Groom Lake military installation located deep in the Nevada desert. The hangar’s interior, a vast cavern carved out of the living mountainside, had been plunged into darkness in preparation for the flight.
As the ground crew towed the aircraft out onto the deserted apron, every light across the installation had been extinguished. The air was still, and countless stars glittered in the clear night sky. Hidden by dark mountains and surrounded by an uninhabited and restricted area of the Nevada desert that covered over 1,300 square miles, the Groom Lake facility enjoyed almost complete physical secrecy, despite it being the most famous military base in the world.
Not one of the small group of men and women gathered in the shadows of the hangar was concerned with such trivial matters. What concerned them was the aircraft that sat on the concrete apron, the matte-black, teardrop-shaped machine emblazoned with the black-and-grey Stars and Stripes on its twin tail fins, a machine they’d all been working on for the past decade, and what their mystified forebears had been puzzling over for several decades before that. The culmination of all that time and effort, all the research and development – and the lives lost – had now disengaged from the tractor a short distance away. The tractor swung around and rolled back into the hangar where it was swallowed by the darkness.
Somewhere in the distance, a coyote’s mournful cry echoed across the installation. The aircraft stood motionless, silent, the pilots invisible behind their black windshield that curved seamlessly around the front of the craft. They would be in contact with the tower over a mile away, seeking clearance for this, the aircraft’s inaugural combat mission. It was a historic moment, one that the group of scientists, engineers, and military personnel could celebrate only with each other. One of them, a propulsion specialist from Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Program, held a finger to the radio receiver in his ear as he listened to an incoming transmission. Then he said quietly to those around him, ‘Here we go.’
They all felt it then, that familiar, mild vibration, and then the craft lifted silently off the apron and hovered 20 feet off the concrete, the only sound a quiet hiss as its three thick, black legs buckled upwards and folded into the main body. For a moment the aircraft remained there, suspended as if by magic, bouncing ever so slightly, and then, with a mild blast of dust and warm air that rolled over the gathered spectators, the craft accelerated upwards and away. In seconds it was lost to the naked eye, and to the electronic ones that had already conceded to the aircraft’s ground-breaking stealth technology.
Its official Air Force designation was the MSS-2, which stood for Multi-Mission Special Operations Aircraft. The men and women on the ground who shook hands in the darkness and filed back inside the darkened hangar had another name for it.
They called it The Game Changer.
> 10
Snoop Dog
Bertie sat alone in the basement kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee.
He glanced up at the clock on the wall, then checked his watch again. Both had barely moved since he’d last looked. He turned his chair and his back to the clock. Time was his enemy tonight.
He sipped his coffee and reflected on his role within the resistance movement. He’d always been a low-key player, serving as an information conduit between George and The Witch, gleaning whatever intelligence he could from his employer. A daily schedule here, an extract from her personal journal there, transcribed notes of conversations he’d overheard. And the names of The Witch’s frequent dinner guests, of course, traitors all, cowards who’d embraced the brutal regime that continued to persecute their fellow countrymen. Bertie often daydreamed of walking into one of those dinners holding a gun, just to see their faces. He hoped that day would come in the not-too-distant future.
In the meantime, he gave anything useful to George, and that’s where his involvement usually ended. He was proud to do his bit, knowing that many others out there did so much more.
Like Gordon Tyndall for example. It was Bertie who’d copied the commissioner’s home address from The Witch’s diary and given it to George, so when he’d heard that the dyke had survived the assassination attempt and Tyndall and his boys had been arrested, he’d panicked. George had put him straight, though. Compartmentalisation, he called it. That’s the way George operated; no phones, no emails, just cut-outs, hand-offs, and dead-letter drops. He was the same back in the Yid Army days, a mobile phone in every pocket, making quiet plans, organising tear-ups. George was a leader. Bertie was nothing more than a foot soldier, and that suited him just fine. He was golden.
Until he’d overheard The Witch discussing Tyndall’s execution on the telephone.
Crucifixion.
Bertie’s blood had run cold. It was a chillingly cruel and barbaric death, and for the first time since the invasion, Bertie feared his employer. He’d taken too many chances, he realised. He’d listened at doors, rifled her handbag, the drawers in her study, because he assumed he’d never be caught. But things had changed. What if she found out he’d been snooping? What if she made the connection with Tyndall’s attempted assassination?
He’d be finished.
He’d become complacent, he realised, and the thought of a slow death hanging from a wooden cross had woken him from that dangerous slumber. Dreams of payback and sweet revenge had vanished like a fart in a gale. The only thing that mattered now was getting through the next 12 hours.
He looked at his watch again. A watched kettle never boils, his mum used to say. Bertie forced himself to relax. He sipped his coffee and thought back to that morning. The day had started with such promise.
He’d been driving into the city when he’d seen the first one, the huge, neon-green letters spray-painted on a wall near Belsize Park: IRELAND LIBERATED! He’d seen the same in Camden, twice, and the fourth one a couple of hundred metres short of the checkpoint at Pancras Way. That one was being hurriedly scrubbed by a prison gang in yellow overalls, but the sight of those defiant words made Bertie’s heart sing, and he wondered how many more had appeared across London that morning. If Ireland had been truly liberated, he wondered how long it might be before British tanks rolled across the frontier.
He saw that same hope reflected on other faces as he crossed the road to Harrods. He registered a smile here, a nod and a wink there, strangers quietly united in their joy, and the knowledge that Alliance troops were not far away.
The Harrods food hall was busy, and Bertie picked up a basket and began browsing the shelves for the items on Chef’s list. He hadn’t expected to see George there, nor the sudden change of plan that George had whispered to him as they’d perused the shelves. Al-Kaabi’s planned pickup from Northwood was in jeopardy. The driver had taken ill, a heart attack, George explained, which meant they needed someone with the right travel permit to meet him at Northwood and drive him to the pre-arranged pickup point. It’s time to step up, George had told Bertie, dropping a carefully folded note into his basket. Right then, all Bertie could think about was being nailed to that cross.
The rest of the day had been a blur. He had no choice but to take The Witch’s car without her consent, drive up to Northwood for midnight and wait until 1 am. If Al-Kaabi didn’t show, it meant he’d been rumbled. And if that happened, they’d all have to run. He packed a bag, all his worldly goods in fact, which wasn’t much. He had no kids and his wife had left him years ago. It’s me or the football, she’d told him. The memory made him smile.
He’d planned to leave for Northwood at 11.15 pm, which would get him there in plenty of time and keep his loitering in the residential street to a minimum, but then The Witch had thrown an unscheduled dinner and a giant fucking spanner in the works. As if he wasn’t stressed enough.
Behind him, the clock on the wall taunted him, ticking like a bomb. He gave in and looked; 10:30 pm, and still no sign that things were winding up. It was a quiet dinner, with Judge Hardy and two others from the National Assembly. Dessert had been served, but they were taking their sweet fucking time about it. Bertie thought about going upstairs with a kitchen knife and doing the lot of them. If only.
Instead, he decided on another coffee, topped up with a shot of excellent brandy, and tried to stop thinking about his own crucifixion. As he unscrewed the cap, he heard Chef’s muffled voice down the basement hall, swearing at the TV, and Bertie considered inviting him for a nightcap. No, he decided. Better to stay focussed. He topped his black coffee off with a soothing measure of Hine Triomphe and retook his seat. The coffee tasted excellent, and Bertie glanced up at the wall, praying for the drawing-room bell to ring, for the guests to piss off and The Witch to climb back inside her coffin.
So he could embark on the most dangerous journey he’d ever undertaken.
Faisal Al-Kaabi’s eyes flicked to the row of digital clocks on the wall of the conference room. New York, Beijing, Islamabad, Baghdad, those time zones held no significance for the intelligence officer at that moment. It was only the local time that concerned him.
His armpits were damp with sweat. The subterranean basement was disagreeably stuffy and packed with bodies. General Mousa held centre stage, strutting around the table, berating, cursing, cajoling, praising. He spoke rapid-fire, jerking his finger at maps and wall-projections, at the uniformed staff officers around the low-ceilinged room. All the talk was about Ireland. Mistakes had been made, none of which had been laid at the door of the culprit, Major-General Kalil Zaki. The man was an incompetent buffoon, but he was also the Caliph’s beloved nephew, and therefore untouchable.
Mousa knew it too. None of his vitriol was directed at Zaki, who stood behind Mousa glowering at the room, daring anyone to make eye contact. And to be fair, it wasn’t all Zaki’s fault. Their shore-based anti-ship missile defences had been taken out by kuffar special forces and cruise missiles long before the allied invasion fleet had sailed into range. Precious aircraft had also been destroyed on the tarmac by Irish resistance fighters, and US submarines sank 50 per cent of the French warships that had been put to sea from the port of Brest before they’d rounded Land’s End. Of the four giant underground bombs in Derry, Enniskillen, Athlone, and Limerick, three of them failed to detonate. The one in Athlone exploded too soon, killing the engineers and alerting the Allies to the threat. After Zaki had fled the country to save his own skin, the defence of Ireland had collapsed.
The conference room reeked of sweat, failure, and fear. Al-Kaabi felt anxious too, mainly because he was carrying a data drive in his shirt pocket that contained 150 gigabytes of raw intelligence and logistics information.
He glanced at the clock on the wall, and once again he cursed the Americans. He knew his defection would come at a price, and that the act of betrayal would be stressful, but he didn’t imagine this. The day before he’d thrown up several times, confining himself to his quarters wit
h a fake bout of food poisoning.
Now he was feeling trapped, acutely aware of the 30 feet of earth above his head pressing down on him, the tiny data drive bulging like a house brick in his breast pocket. Once again, he questioned his sanity. He should’ve broken off the affair, fled the moment he realised he’d been compromised. He could’ve asked for compassionate leave, flown back to Amman, asked for a re-posting. He could’ve done all of that, and yet here he sat, exposed, frightened, and desperate to run. To escape.
‘Are you late for something?’
The man who whispered in his ear was Yosef Hassan, an intelligence officer like Al-Kaabi, but older, thinner, and bald, with cold, officious eyes behind his round glasses. Hassan’s career had faltered somewhere down the line, and the man was keen to make up for lost time. He was a sycophant, eager to please his superiors at the expense of others. When he’d taken the seat next to Al-Kaabi, the younger man had cursed his luck.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You keep looking at the clock,’ Hassan whispered. ‘Is there somewhere else you should be?’
The man’s breath reeked of onions. Al-Kaabi winced theatrically. ‘Yes, the bathroom.’
Hassan leaned a little closer. ‘You could always ask the general to get a move on.’
Al-Kaabi forced a quick smile and looked away. Now the data drive felt like a laptop strapped to his chest, visible for all to see.
He focussed as the subject turned to missiles. Hostilities with China meant no more weapons shipments, no more replacement parts or system boards. No more support of any kind. The tap had been turned off and that would hurt their forces badly. Al-Kaabi listened carefully as his colleagues discussed the dispersal of their precious missiles. Mousa wanted them split between the UK and Chinese theatres. A plan was thrashed out and agreed, and orders issued. Then, to Al-Kaabi’s immense relief, the meeting was adjourned.
