Death Tide

by Devon C. Ford

  As the two aircraft rose to take off only thirty seconds after landing, with their engine notes dialling up intensity, another helicopter flew in from the direction of the sea, only this time it was the profile of a Bell. Johnson wasn’t knowledgeable enough to tell who it belonged to but had to guess that it was American. That helicopter flew directly over them heading inland, and when the Sea Kings had turned their noses back out to sea to fly away, the Apache moved from its unnervingly steady hover, dipped its own nose, and followed the Bell.

  Frowning, Johnson walked towards the headquarters building and prepared for the influx of experts.

  The Bedford truck that had been coaxed up the steep roads in anticipation of bringing down their new guests returned to the lower slopes shortly after the air had returned to still silence. The canvas flap at the back was in its normal position of up, and a small unit of camouflaged uniformed soldiers hopped down and retrieved various heavy kit bags and weapons.

  The last man down, crisply uniformed and moustached, with thickly-rimmed glasses between moustache and beret, strode to Johnson and waited for a salute.

  The SSM’s eyes ran over the insignia, the crowned rose, and the crowns on the shoulders.

  “Sir,” he said as he drew himself up to attention and saluted briefly.

  “Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson, I presume?” said the man as he returned the salute in acknowledgment.

  “Yessir.”

  “Major Hadlington,” he said smoothly before unnecessarily adding, “Intelligence Corps.”

  Johnson had known in less than a heartbeat that the man was a major, and that he was Green Slime through and through from the insignia and the look of him. Johnson, like just about every member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces employed in a combat arm, had a deep mistrust of the intelligence corps and often made the common jest about ‘army intelligence’ being the world’s biggest oxymoron. The corps had only recently been bumped up from being a support arm into a combat support arm, and although the difference sounded small, it served to elevate the men and women of the intelligence corps from rear-echelon to something closer to the sharp end of the spear, in their eyes.

  He knew that elevation was due to the work they had evolved into ‘over the water’ and he had met a few of them who were part of something known simply as ‘the detachment’, which was their elite counter-terrorist surveillance unit. The men, and women, he reminded himself, of those units were respected and revered in certain circles, because they put their lives on the line just as the troops on the ground did.

  The one thing that Johnson was wrong about, was his guess that the moustached major would have a double-barrelled name. He was expecting something utterly Etonian like the Simpkins-Palmer boys he had to endure, then felt a stab of guilt for thinking that, as only one of those men was a useless fop of an aristocrat, in his book.

  Major Raymond Hadlington, while in possession of the breeding and accent associated with the mockery of the enlisted ranks, was a hard-working man who demanded precision and efficiency from those under his command. He felt that he had the right to demand this, as he led by example. His team, some of whom he had worked with previously, had been working effectively from their cramped quarters on board the Royal Navy frigate.

  Their panicked flight from their base in Germany two weeks previously, as the fence line was swarmed by a flowing, roiling mass of corpses, was still fresh in their collective minds. As was the helicopter ride that evacuated them minutes before the fence collapsed and the dead poured inside.

  That desperate escape was another story, and not one that Hadlington wanted to remember, because to him it signalled that the army had abandoned the continent that held the majority of their forces.

  Being a major in the intelligence arena, he was far from the mushroom status of most force personnel, who claimed to be kept permanently in the dark and fed bullshit. He knew that continental Europe was all but gone, and he knew that the Soviets were unleashing hell on the eastern borders to stop the flow of infected bodies walking over the expanse of land borders, with flight after flight of bombers laying waste to the hordes.

  To the west, the Americans stopped all traffic heading in their direction, and ran near constant aerial surveillance by using two of their AWACS, refuelled in mid-air with as many personnel on board as they could manage. The drain on that constant air surveillance had been alleviated with the arrival of the US carrier fleet. Hadlington was also hearing rumours that forces were being dispatched to Iceland, and they had even struck some kind of deal with the remaining Spanish government surviving on their cluster of islands off the western coast of Africa to begin sending vessels and aircraft. Seeing as the islands had shut their borders entirely, allowing the US forces to take over the airports in exchange for the promise of financial reparations was an easy decision for them to make.

  In other parts of the world they were preparing to strengthen their own defences and effectively hunker down until the terrifying mess sorted itself out.

  When Major Hadlington was told he would be returning to the UK, he was confused at first, then he was informed of the pockets of resistance which were mainly military-led. He was given the information regarding the UK’s strength, then tasked with taking a team to conduct operations on the south coast for the newly-formed joint command at sea group. He was given the personnel list, assembled them and brought them all up to speed on the global situation and then laid out his own personal rules for how they would operate as a unit.

  Now as he strode confidently into the low, dark building that purported to be the island’s headquarters, he wrinkled his nose at the stale air and ordered the windows opened to purge it. He walked over to the radio operator, Corporal Daniels, and cleared his throat.

  “Stand by one,” Daniels said into the mic before standing and offering a salute, “Daniels, Sir,” he introduced himself, then waited to be given permission to resume his duties.

  Hadlington kept him waiting on his feet, before turning to look at his own personnel.

  “Ward?” he said, and a female corporal stepped towards them, “Take over from Daniels here, make sure you get a full disposition before you relieve him.”

  “Sir,” she acknowledged, turning to look at Daniels expectantly.

  “And Corporal,” Hadlington said over his shoulder, “there will be no smoking inside this control room from now on, in case you are recalled to duty here.”

  Daniels looked at his replacement, who stared at him blankly. Feeling awkward and admonished as his comfortably dark and smoky surroundings were transformed, he put the cigarette out in the cold remains of his coffee cup and sat back down to hand over his station.

  Hadlington spread a new map over the central table, showing the target location in finer detail. He had been told that the armoured unit was on standby to move out and waited for their commanding officer to report to him.

  After five minutes he had not appeared, so he called for a runner. A Lance Corporal arrived before him, and he sent the man, or the boy more like, away with curt instructions.

  “Ward, any update from Charlie-One-One yet?” he asked the new radio operator, who was tidying the workstation, wearing a look of distaste.

  “Stand by, Sir,” she said, then reached for the set to turn dials and transmit using her clear radio voice.

  “Charlie-One-One, this is Zero, Charlie-One-One, Zero, over,” she said almost robotically.

  A pause extended to almost ten seconds before she repeated the line using the exact same precise intonations and rhythm for each word.

  “Nothing, Sir,” she said after her second attempt, “stand by,”

  “Jeeves-Five-Three, Jeeves-Five-Three, come in,” she said, visibly grimacing at the vulgarity she suspected would follow.

  “Jeeves-Five-Three, receiving,” came the static reply from the speaker in what neither of them recognised as a Virginia accent. The background noise behind the words was a screaming, chattering whine.

  “Fiv
e-Three,” Ward said, refusing to use the American aviator’s callsign, which she suspected had been chosen specifically to annoy the British, “update on Charlie-One-One progress?”

  “Your boys are on the ground as of six minutes ago, Jeeves is en-route,” both Ward and Hadlington winced at his pronunciation of the terminology, “to the next objective and the cab is RTB.”

  The lead pilot in the Apache signed off from the Brits and smirked a small smile of satisfaction to himself, because he had annoyed the female operator into not using the callsign he had picked intentionally for the purpose of pissing off his allies. Cruising along at a steady four hundred feet and one hundred and sixty miles per hour, the ground below him sped by in a blur. He saw occasional snippets of detail if he glanced down, but each time he did so he usually saw something he didn’t want to remember. Blasting over the low, rolling lush green of the countryside in between small pockets of habitation, he saw those snippets now. A white car sitting at an unnatural angle with its nose in a ditch. A small knot of people standing around aimlessly and staring upwards at the same time in response to the sound of his engines, a building, blackened by fire and almost entirely without a roof, then a sight that upset him.

  Two kids, one small and one smaller, carrying bags and walking in the middle of a single lane road with hedgerows on each side, wandering aimlessly, or so it seemed.

  Hadlington, as offended as his very British sensibilities were, straightened and nodded. He now knew that the ground team, Charlie-One-One, who he knew only as a four-man team that he hadn’t met, which spoke volumes as to their identity, was now at the objective. The annoying Apache pilot was currently flying east towards the gathering swarm outside north London for their own mission, and the ‘cab’ being the approximation of Charlie-One-One’s taxi, was returning to its base out on the English Channel. They would not see either aircraft again.

  Hadlington knew that he had seniors and counterparts in other places, mostly still on the gathering flotilla of giant crew ships in the Channel, which were a mixture of British, French, American and Norwegian. He knew that there were other Charlie teams out there from the allocation of callsigns alone and wondered what their objectives were.

  The door opened, and his ponderings ceased as he turned to face a smiling young Captain with the red eyes of a man who had probably drunk to excess the previous night and who had yet to shave that morning. He sketched a salute without waiting for it to be acknowledged and held out his hand.

  “Julian Simpkins-Palmer, Household Cavalry,” he said introducing himself.

  “Hadlington, Intelligence,” he responded brusquely as he shook the offered hand.

  Palmer learned everything he needed to from that simple exchange.

  Hadlington, he guessed, was a man without humour who had no time in his busy schedule for human interaction that didn’t directly involve something tangible and achievable. He probably made an instant judgement about the Captain from both his age and his appearance, but Palmer was not so insecure as to offer an explanation or an apology. He reckoned that Hadlington would probably disapprove of his spending time with the men under his command and mucking in with the dirty work when the timing was right. He would probably think that Palmer’s internal database of the men’s first names as well as their surnames was an ineffective waste of time for an officer, along with the few personal details he tried to recall for any man under his command.

  He felt as though he had failed himself when trooper Harris died, because he didn’t know his first name. He only recalled that he wasn’t originally from the area but had moved because his father was in the navy, and that his signing up to the army had caused a family disagreement which he guessed would never be resolved now.

  The major hadn’t even abbreviated his unit to the accepted ‘Int Corps’ that was the norm, and Palmer didn’t even want to consider his opinion on the capabilities of the men, given that they were predominantly reservists and not full-time soldiers.

  “Captain,” Hadlington said, “I was informed that your men were equipped and ready to move. Is that not the case?”

  “It is, Sir,” he said, “and they are. We had a spot of bother in the night is all.”

  “Bother?” Hadlington asked, taken aback.

  “Yes, Sir, seems a few of the blighters got wind of us here and made a concerted effort to come in uninvited. Been at it since about four this morning clearing them out and only just finished. If that’s all for now, Sir? I’d like to get cleaned up if you don’t mind?”

  “Yes, of course,” Hadlington answered, a little shocked.

  Just then, the Bedford returned from its second journey to the top of the hill to squeak to a loud halt outside the building just as Johnson greeted Palmer.

  “The usual slime,” Johnson opined about the unsmiling major.

  “Now, now, Mister Johnson,” he admonished the man gently with a smile of his own, “but I don’t think we will have a problem getting around him.”

  Johnson opened his mouth to agree, to offer his opinion on being under orders of a Major who would suffer the runaround from the troops, but at that moment their problems were compounded.

  The last man to climb down from the bed of the truck among his personal entourage wore the uniform of the Royal Scots. He had two privates in the same uniform caps attending him as his bag men and, as though some portent of imminent bad luck, wore the two stars and a crown of a full Colonel.

  Both Palmer and Johnson deflated as one, the latter even letting a small groan of disappointment escape his lips. The Colonel noticed them at that point and stepped towards them beaming a smile. He walked with a curious gait, looking to pause on the ball of each foot before lifting the limb quickly, as though to catch up and make good the time lost from the hesitation. His face seemed genuinely happy to see them, but had an air of falsehood to it, as though he were on display for the film crews in some backwater country, giving out fake smiles to support the foreign interests of UK PLC.

  “Colonel Tim Munro, Royal Scots,” he introduced himself with the same broad smile and no hint of a Scottish accent. Both men swelled to attention and offered salutes; Johnson with his right hand to his eyebrow and Palmer with his sub-machine gun held vertically in his left hand against his body and performing his salute with his right hand held against the weapon.

  “At ease, chaps,” he said, “and you are?”

  “Captain Palmer, Sir, Household Cavalry.”

  Colonel Tim nodded affably and muttered, “Splendid, splendid,” then looked expectantly to Johnson.

  “Squadron Sergeant Major Johnson, Sir,” he said woodenly, “C Squadron Yeomanry.”

  “Splendid,” Colonel Tim said again, then seemed to grow bored with their company and turned away only to swing back and offer a mutter of advice to Palmer.

  “Captain, perhaps you’d prefer to shave and change before we meet again? Show a better example for the men, eh? Good lad.”

  “Yes Sir,” Palmer said, “sorry, Sir, won’t happen again.”

  The two men sank again as the kindly old fool walked away.

  “Well, bugger me,” Palmer said in a low breath as his hands ran over the scratchy stubble on his chin.

  “Rather not, Sir,” Johnson said automatically, “but I suspect we’ve just crapped in our own mess tin getting that shower of shit land on us.”

  “Mess Tim,” Palmer responded drily.

  And the two of them finally realised the double blow their command structure had just dealt them. The intelligence corps major was too junior to be a wrinkle to the army personnel, let alone the Royal Marines, but the combination of the meticulous major and the blustering buffoon of a full Colonel was a true fait accompli; one made the suggestions but the other gave the orders. The major could be circumvented, given his status with the men and the Colonel could be ‘handled’ but the combination of them rendered the forces already on the ground powerless.

  Palmer, as exhausted as he was, led the seven vehicles of his
expedition across the road bridge within an hour of the arrival of their new commanding officer and his staff. He took Two Troop under the command of Sergeant Rod Sinclair. Johnson had flatly refused to allow Maxwell’s assault troop to go for two reasons; firstly, that their Spartans needed maintenance, and secondly that Maxwell had been in the vanguard of almost every mission they had run since the whole lunacy began. For a similar reason he left Strauss’ troop off the menu, as they hadn’t had a chance to fully recover from losing a man on their last venture outside the safety of the island. That left his two other Sabre troops, and of those, Sinclair’s was deemed the steadiest. Three Troop was a mixture of troopers moulded into one team of twelve that hadn’t yet obtained that kind of fighting unit cohesion they needed, at least not in Johnson’s opinion anyway, and that was what mattered.

  He had relented and borrowed a reliable man from both Maxwell’s and Strauss’ troops to drive the two Saxons and taxi the eight Royal Marines under the leadership of their sergeant, Bill Hampton. In each of those armoured personnel carriers were four marines and a single nuclear engineer from America. The suggestion to split the precious cargo was a sensible precaution, as each of the skilled men was effectively protected by his own ‘brick’, or four-man patrol. Sticking to that template made it more likely that at least one of them would remain unharmed and capable of preventing the power station going boom.