The last vehicle, sitting in the middle between the Saxons with two Foxes fore and aft, was the Sultan vehicle that Johnson wished he had been in. He had lent him his radio operator, Corporal Daniels, as the man had been left looking for work after his ejection from the headquarters building.
Johnson watched them out of sight, not knowing that they would face nothing of the resistance they expected.
SEVENTEEN
Major Clive Downes stayed on one knee and looked over the iron sights and fat, suppressed barrel of the brand new MP5SD he had been issued along with his men. They were all familiar with the weapons, having used them extensively when their squadron rotated onto the ‘Black’ team, but the sudden change felt slightly alien.
They had just spent seven months living in the caves and villages with the Mujahedeen, as unsavoury as the experience was, and had been carrying the plentiful AK47s that flooded half of the world. There was no need for heavy calibre penetration with this strange new enemy, and their distance needs were catered for by one of his men who carried the rarest of possessions in the western military; that of the Soviet VAL 9mm silenced sniper rifle.
That weapon had been one of the reasons that US and UK special forces had been in Afghanistan, as the Soviet technological advances with an active war for testing, had been astronomical. Consequently, samples of new weapons were highly sought after to enable them to produce effective countermeasures, should the Cold War turn hot. That captured rifle had never made it into the hands of the civilian masters, however, and would now be employed against the dead instead of being rigorously tested and reverse-engineered.
The arms race had become the new space race, with each side of the globe working tirelessly to develop new weaponry to beat the defences of their potential opposition.
With their rapid-firing suppressed machine guns and their silenced sniper rifle, their doomsday options were strapped to the backs of two of them in the forms of shotguns; fully automatic shotguns, for when they had no option but to go loud.
Their sidearms, as with many special forces teams, were a mixture as they had access to a choice of weapons to suit their individual preferences. The regular troops, what the men of the Special Air Service referred to as the Green Army, would never be allowed to pick their weapons or show individual flavours as they did. Two of them carried the Browning Hi-Power, one carried the American Colt .45 and their Major preferred the Sig-Sauer P228.
Those four men, with their weapon-based idiosyncrasies, possessed enough firepower and lethal training to perform as an entire platoon of regular soldiers. Now, kneeling in a rough circle facing outwards, they listened as the sounds of the helicopter blades faded away into silence.
As if the four men had evolved to become streamlined instruments of warfare, even their names were mostly single-syllable. Their officer, nominally in charge but in their arena at the peak of their chosen profession every man had a say, was known simply as Boss or The Boss to the men. The men, a corporal and two troopers, were similarly named Mac, Desmond or ‘Dezzy’ and Smiffy. He introduced himself as Smiffy with two fs, in his cheeky south London accent. Desmond wasn’t Dezzy’s real name, but it was a joke at his expense from his parent unit, who said they would see him soon and dubbed him Desmond Tutu, as in Two-Two for 22 SAS, when he left for Hereford on selection. The joke backfired, as he passed selection on his first attempt and retained the nickname in celebration.
To outsiders, their curious tight-knit nature seemed unnatural and very un-army-like. But outsiders didn’t understand them. Other than their Major, who retained his rank when passing selection, when ordinarily he would have been forced to rotate out after two or three years, as he had done when he’d served his first stint in the regiment as a captain. The enlisted men lost whatever rank they held in their parent units and often went from sergeants or corporals back to being troopers. The fact that the major had been invited back for a second stint spoke volumes about his competency.
The sound of rotor blades faded into silence and Mac’s soft Scottish voice drifted to the others from behind them as they covered their own sectors of fire.
“Three, slow movers, one hundred yards,” he muttered.
“Smiffy,” the major said, “on you.”
Trooper Smith said nothing but turned and lay flat, pointing towards the direction Mac was facing. He slipped the long rifle from his shoulder and settled into the stock, pausing a few heartbeats before the three whistling coughs barked from the gun. All three zombies fell, and the Major called the move.
They stepped towards the big power plant in bounds; two men covering and two men moving. The main access door was opened with a swipe card which had been coded and provided by their colonial cousins. The door opened with a tiny metallic buzz and Mac held the handle of the door as he glanced back to see the other three stacked up in tight formation with their MP5s up and ready.
They went in, clearing the building section by section and finding only a dozen people inside the compound after three hours of thorough searching. Not people specifically, but undead, lurching creatures who had been, up until fairly recently, people.
“Call it in,” Downes said to Mac, who was carrying their radio, and watched as he snaked out the antenna on the ground.
“Zero, this is Charlie-One-One. Zero, Charlie-One-One, over,” he said in low, robotic tones.
“One-One, Zero, send,” came the female voice from the other end of the ether.
“One-One, target secure. ETA on convoy?”
“Stand by, one,” came the operator’s voice before a brief pause, “ETA one-nine minutes, over.”
Mac glanced at the Boss, who nodded back. Nineteen minutes until the engineers arrived with their armoured escort to stop the plant from going critical. Mac acknowledged the information and signed off to pack up the radio gear. Nineteen minutes came and went in relative quiet, other than the two shambling callers at the gate. The four men still maintained cover and situational awareness, ingrained habits they were unable to switch off after a life of considering incoming enemy fire. They had yet to see a zombie with the ability to bring a weapon to bear, but carelessness, as Mac liked to say, often led to a mild case of death.
The two callers were allowed to come close, then both took single rounds in the skull as they coughed from Dezzy’s MP5 at a distance of twenty feet. They had learned to be economical with their shots, unless faced with one of the rare faster ones that usually denoted a sizeable force of zombies would soon follow. This experience had been earned shortly after their return from the sub to the surface of the water, when told they would be employed for precision missions and would be inserted far behind enemy lines, such as they were. Downes requested a day in theatre for training, as the intelligence briefs held no mention or description of how to fight them.
The powers that be allowed the request after a day of deliberation, evidently deciding that their small team was replaceable should they not return, and the intelligence they could bring back would be worthwhile.
Given that they had already been told that sound attracted them, and that a tiny percentage of them acted differently and were more dangerous, Downes requested the suppressed MP5s. They flew by helicopter to a sparsely-populated region of northern France and spent six hours developing tactics which they reported back to command. Their rules were simple:
small groups, low noise profile,
use suppressed weapons whenever possible,
avoid large concentrations of enemy and drop the faster ones at distance as soon identification made,
then clear out before arrival of their faithful followers.
Their tactics were under the radar, invisible, and quiet. The rest of the time was waited out in silence, until the whistling and squeaking of moving armour tickled the edges of their hearing. Nobody said anything, because they didn’t have to. An armoured convoy was the exact opposite of the warfare that they practised, and although impressive and able to bring a staggering and devastating amou
nt of firepower to bear, they also attracted every shuffling corpse inside of a mile radius just by driving along the road, even before they fired a shot.
The diversionary tactic from the American Apache pilot should have helped, as he flew over fifty miles east before destroying a large road bridge to stem the flow of corpses and contain them. This also served to make a lot of noise and attract anything heading in the direction of the power station away towards the fast-flowing river and the sea beyond where the bridge had collapsed.
As the seven vehicles stormed in and had the gates pushed closed behind them, the four men jogged in to the entrance where the convoy formed a semi-circle and faced their guns outwards. A man wearing a captain’s insignia stepped down from a tracked light tank and met the four men as they arrived.
“Captain Palmer,” he said to the men, who weren’t in the slightest bit breathless after their quarter-mile run from the gate, “Household Cavalry.”
“Captain,” acknowledged Mac as the first man to have arrived, giving Palmer the incorrect assumption that he was the officer leading the group. Downes stayed back from the conversation, waiting to hear what transpired.
“I presume you’ve been inside?” Palmer asked, guessing that the four men with wild beards and piercing eyes were clearly what his men would call sneaky-beaky, and probably wouldn’t have felt it necessary to wait for half a squad of marines to check out an abandoned building.
“It’s clear,” Mac said simply, “you’ve brought the engineers?”
In answer, two men were escorted towards the doors, with four marines surrounding each one.
“We’ll take it from here,” Downes said, stepping forward and speaking for the first time. Palmer’s eyebrows rose slightly, indicating that his trained ear had picked up on the educated voice and had clearly misunderstood who the officer was. Given the man’s age, Palmer also correctly surmised in an eye-blink that the man was his senior and responded accordingly.
“Of course, Sir,” he answered, “I shall set the perimeter and wait for instructions.”
Downes nodded his thanks to him and turned to indicate that the two engineers should follow. The six men disappeared inside after the door was swiped open, leaving Palmer with that cold sense of having been bypassed by some ghostly spirit and unsure of what he had experienced.
“Sinclair? Hampton?” Palmer said loudly, waiting for the army and marine sergeants to report to him.
“The Sultan is to remain here,” he said, indicating a strong point by the doors, “with two Foxes. Take the other two to the gate and switch off the engines. Hampton? Perimeter patrols in opposing directions, if you please.”
The sergeants acknowledged their orders, gave their own to make it happen, and Palmer waited.
“There and there,” said one engineer, his accent alien in the English countryside, “we need to access that panel and recalibrate, then reset the coolant flow from up there,” he finished, pointing to a glass bubble on the walkway level above their heads.
The four men of the SAS patrol listened, but in honesty cared little for the technicalities as they wouldn’t be asked to perform the task and thought it better to keep to their areas of expertise. They kept their weapons ready as the two Americans went about their work, draining the coolant and powering down the output to a more manageable level. The mostly-depleted coolant had drained away and the large pipes whooshed as more water pumped in. The two men worked for almost forty minutes, far less time than Downes expected, before declaring that they were done.
“That’s it?” he asked them.
“Sure, all we had to do was drain the system, power it down as much as possible and top off the tanks,” he replied, “This place is only kicking out about thirty percent of normal, but it’s good for almost a year before we have to do anything to it. It ain’t like there are a lot of folks around here using their microwaves, right?” he finished with a laugh.
“Nah, mate,” Smiffy said acidly, “because most people in our fuckin’ country are dead, so show a bit of respect.”
The man shut his mouth, packed up his tools, and waited to be led back outside.
“Captain?” Downes said as he looked up to where Palmer was sprouting out of the hatch on the Sultan.
“Sir?”
“Is your man linked to your base?” Downes asked, wanting to know if they had open radio communication.
“He is,” Palmer told him.
“Could you trouble them for our transport to be sent?” Downes enquired politely.
Palmer frowned, “Of course, but,” he said hesitantly, “aren’t you hitching a ride back with us?”
“They are,” Downes said as he gestured to the engineers, “we’re not.”
He said nothing else, telling Palmer that the subject was, at least as far as the irregular soldiers of the special forces were concerned, closed. Palmer instructed his radio man to make the call and received his own orders to return to the island. Palmer offered to remain until such time as the helicopter arrived for the four-man team, but Downes quietly embarrassed him by pointing out that anything following the noise trail would be after them and not the aircraft it would never find. He didn’t embarrass himself further by enquiring where they were going but wished the men well as he recalled his convoy to prepare to depart.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” Downes said with a chilling smile that was probably meant to seem reassuring, “something tells me we’ll be meeting again soon.”
Long before the convoy returned, Johnson found himself summoned by the new commander of their island to deal with a civilian matter. He entered the room to find Colonel Tim looking remarkably flustered and the three men of his entourage seemingly powerless to assist.
“Thank God for that,” said a young woman who appeared to be the spokesperson for the three civilians sitting at the table, “someone with some sense at last. Mister Johnson, would you please explain to this man that we aren’t soldiers and that the army doesn’t own us?”
Johnson turned to his new commanding officer and saluted, which seemed to please the man.
“Miss Perkins, perhaps if I understood the issue better?” he said gently, meaning that he had no damned clue what was happening.
“This gentleman,” Kimberley said as she gestured towards the rather deflated-looking Colonel, “wants us all herded up and catalogued. Perhaps we should have serial numbers tattooed on our arms to make life easier for you?”
“Sergeant Major,” Colonel Tim interrupted in what he thought was a placatory tone but in fact bathed the room in arrogance and condescension, “all I simply said was that we need to record the details of every civilian living under our protection here so that we can properly establish who can be of service.”
“That’s not what he said,” Kimberley explained in a mirroring tone of talking down to him before glancing back at Johnson, “he said that we are all, what was it? Suckling at the military teat? And that we have to show our gratitude.”
Johnson understood. He understood the point that both people were trying to make and was firmly of the opinion that the elderly buffoon understood no concept of speaking to an audience that wasn’t disciplined and dutybound to call him Sir and follow his orders.
“Perhaps, Miss Perkins,” he enquired politely, “if the Colonel and I could discuss military matters in private for a moment?”
Kimberley understood, gave a nod to the two men there in support of her, who looked similarly offended, and retrieved a cigarette and lighter from her purse before stepping outside.
“May I, Sir?” Johnson asked, gesturing at a vacant chair.
“By all means, Johnson, by all means,” the Colonel responded.
Johnson sat, cast a cold glance at the two orderlies, which clearly translated as a polite request for them to make themselves scarce, and smiled at the officer. His aide, a Lieutenant who probably had an advanced qualification in senior officer babysitting, and a tenuous family connection to the royals which elevated him above his
years and rank, remained standing behind his Colonel.
“Sir, I don’t want to overstep, but if I may offer a solution to dealing with the civilians that would save time and allow you to concentrate on command matters instead?” Johnson said. The Lieutenant smiled, acknowledging a fellow smooth-talker.
“What do you have in mind?” Colonel Tim asked, leaning forward in anticipation.
“It’s just that an officer from my squadron had done all the legwork before you arrived, Sir, and if you’ll permit me to say, Sir, it’s more of a junior officer’s job, so that you can keep a tactical awareness of the situation as a whole, Sir, and be ready to lead us instead of being bogged down with the whys and wherefores of the rank and file, let alone the vagaries of civilian management,” he said, baffling the man’s brain with what seemed like the witchcraft of the working classes. He had used this trick more than once in his career when dealing with officers and spouting total rubbish with a confident tone and a hopeful smile at the end of his official-sounding waffle never failed to confuse any senior officer.
“Ah, I see,” the Colonel said as he leaned back and gave a theatrically conspiratorial wink, “so you think this man would be better placed to smooth the waves, eh? Manage the herd a little?”
“Absolutely, Sir,” Johnson said with a smile, happy that the man had seen the logical suggestion in his utter nonsense.
“Very well, I trust you’ll see to that?” he asked as he craned his neck up to his aide.
“Of course, Sir, I shall seek out this…” he trailed off as he shot a questioning look at Johnson.
“Lieutenant Simpkins-Palmer, Sir,” he answered, investing the objectionable, jumped-up brat of an officer’s name with as much aristocratic idiocy as he could muster.
“I shall find him right away, assuming he can be spared from his duties,” the aide replied.
Death Tide Page 35
