by Dc Alden
He was due a little time off. He would take Jessie away for a few days, he decided, down to the cottage in Devon, or maybe up to Scotland. A trip to the Highlands, like last year. They’d have a chat about it over dinner when he got home. If the traffic was light on the M25, he could be there in under an hour.
The twinkling runway lights beckoned in the distance. Captain Ainsworth touched his foot pedals, slipping the aircraft a fraction to the right. Nine hundred feet below, the River Thames snaked its way westward, a sparkling ribbon under the warm summer sun.
Alex cut away from the river and strolled along the residential side street, a short distance from the apartment block. He hoped Kirsty was around, confident she’d say yes to a few drinks. He’d take her down to the Wheatsheaf, the one by the river; then, if things went well, maybe a bite to eat later on. That’d be a nice touch. And it was going to be a beautiful evening, too. Gorgeous girl, lovely weather, day off tomorrow; life was looking pretty good right now, Alex smiled.
He felt the rumble deep in the pit of his stomach. His smile faded as he turned to see a British Airways Airbus on final approach into Heathrow. Alex shielded his eyes and watched as the huge aircraft swept low overhead. Wouldn’t catch me on one of those things, he thought. Look at the size of it. Alex felt he could almost reach out and touch it, it looked so low. Optical illusion of course, but still.
Be nice to move away one day, he thought, out of London and away from any flight paths. Day in, day out, hundreds of planes flying overhead, yet there’d never been a major accident, thank God. But Alex believed in the law of averages. So many flights a day, the airspace over London becoming increasingly tighter; the media had speculated about the possibility of a major disaster for years. Surely it was only a matter of time?
One of these days, he thought grimly.
From her position on the sun lounger, Kirsty craned her neck to see what was going on down below. The driveway between the apartment blocks led straight to the gardens at the rear and, beyond that, the towpath and the Thames itself. Sitting up a little straighter, Kirsty could make out the roof of a vehicle. It looked like a mini-van or something similar, parked just behind the buildings. Not Alex, then. Damn. So who the hell was it? The driveway was private property, residents only, but that didn’t stop some people who wanted a quiet place off the street to get up to all sorts of nonsense. She heard the sound of feet crunching on the gravel and low voices. She slipped off the lounger and peered carefully over the balcony.
Thirty feet below, three men dressed in fatigues were unloading long green tubes from the back of the mini-van. Kirsty instinctively pulled her head back, unaware of what was going on, but knowing that whatever it was it didn’t look right. Very slowly, she leaned forward and stole another glance. The men were all Asian or something, dressed in baggy combat trousers and tshirts. And the tubes, they were green with black stencilling on the sides. Two of the men were bent over them doing something, and the third man kept looking upwards into the sky. She could hear them talking, urgent barks more like, but it was getting harder to hear because there was a bloody plane coming and… Oh God.
In that moment, Kirsty realised what these men were about to do, but the horror of it rooted her to the spot. Below, two of the men clambered quickly onto the roof of the mini-van, the other passing up the surface-to-air missile launchers. The men rested the weapons on their shoulders, swinging them around and aiming into the summer sky. Kirsty stood transfixed on the balcony, unable to move, her hands gripping the rail and her mouth moving soundlessly in silent terror.
Europe: 5.58 pm GMT
All across the continent they waited. The moment they had trained for was nearly upon them and each cell, each group, each individual had planned their operations meticulously. Some had been preparing for years, receiving their briefings in the desert lands, moving to the countries of the west, assimilating into local communities, infiltrating their target organisations, securing employment, identifying the personalities, mapping the infrastructure, absorbing and planning the finer details of their operations and briefing their own assault teams. Other individuals and groups had received target-only instructions weeks, days and, in a few cases, hours before. Hidden weapons had been distributed, explosives obtained and targets reconnoitred. Twenty-four hours earlier, they’d received the ‘go’ signal from their handlers; there would be no going back.
Final checks were made, wristwatches and other timepieces synchronised with atomic clocks across the continent. Last minute recesses were organised and conducted, equipment and weapons were checked and vehicles fuelled and readied. Nothing was left to chance. From the Baltic coast to the toecap of Italy, thousands of individuals and assault teams all across Europe moved into their positions. The countdown had begun.
At air, land and sea control points, computer systems were logged into and powerful software codes secretly executed. Security guards at targeted locations were lured away and neutralised, or simply wandered from their posts, leaving them unguarded. Intruder alarms and CCTV systems suddenly developed ‘faults’ or were shut down completely. As the minutes ticked away, other teams took up ambush positions around their targets, their weapons loaded and ready.
Transport infrastructure was a paramount objective. Railheads and major junctions, marshalling yards, airports, air traffic control centres, motorways, trunk roads, bridges, tunnels, crossing points, ferry ports, cargo docks and the Channel Tunnel itself were all targeted with specialist teams, whose tasks were to secure and hold with the minimum of damage. Laser designators were activated and placed in the grounds of buildings and installations that were targeted for military action. Their unique signals were detected by Arabian aircraft patrolling high above the Mediterranean Sea. Locations were plotted, coordinates fed into targeting computers and downloaded into fuelled and prepared missiles that waited silently in darkened silos.
Around the coastlines and docks of Europe, combat troops and their supporting tanks and armoured vehicles waited in the rolling gloom of cavernous cargo holds. Sailing under false papers and flags of convenience, the ships had arrived at their target ports over the last twenty-four hours. The troops inside these ships peered cautiously out through hidden viewing ports at the activity on the docks below them and the landscape beyond. This was to be their battleground.
Across Arabia, under the harsh desert sun, hundreds of thousands of fighting troops and support units made final checks to their weapons and equipment whilst they waited in huge, sprawling camps, airfields and assembly points dotted around the coast from Turkey to Morocco. Twenty thousand paratroopers and their Air Mobile support units were already airborne, their aircraft transponders identifying them to Air Traffic Controllers across Europe as simple cargo or passenger planes. They flew criss-cross patterns over Eastern Europe and the Southern Mediterranean, adhering to well-rehearsed schedules and air-traffic lanes.
On the ground, another one hundred and ten thousand paratroopers sweated inside their aircraft as they waited for the ‘go’ signal that would send them across the skies into Europe. The wait would be short as the minutes ticked away.
An operation that had been over two decades in the planning was about to be realised. Years had become months, weeks become days, hours finally minutes. The military might of Arabia was poised, about to unleash itself upon the West in a show of force not seen since the beginning of man.
Chiswick, West London: 5.59 pm
Kirsty heard the roar of the aircraft overhead and her eyes were drawn upwards. Several hundred feet above, a huge Airbus thundered over the rooftops of Chiswick on its final approach into Heathrow. She turned back to the men below her, gripping the balcony rail until her knuckles turned white. The horror of what was about to happen numbed her senses. As the plane passed overhead, the men below fired their weapons almost simultaneously. In a blast of white smoke, the high explosive missiles streaked away towards their targets, the superheated engines of Speedbird Two-Niner-Seven.
K
irsty finally found her voice and screamed, an ear-splitting, high-pitched wail that cut through the roar of the plane’s engines and the launch of the missiles. The men on the ground spun around. On seeing Kirsty, one of them reached into the van and retrieved an automatic weapon. He shouldered it and took aim.
It was over mercifully quickly for Captain Ainsworth, his crew and the five hundred and eleven passengers of British Airways flight Two-Niner-Seven. The moment the Stinger missiles bored their way into the starboard engines they detonated, igniting the remaining fuel in the wing. It literally separated from the body of the aircraft.
Ainsworth’s world turned upside down as the instrument warning panel lit up and the plane banked violently to port. In that hideous moment, the experienced pilot knew they were doomed. With an audible groan, its engines screaming, the huge aircraft flipped over completely and plummeted towards the ground at nearly two hundred miles per hour.
At that time of day, Mortlake Road was heavy with traffic in both directions. People were making their way home, eager to escape the heat of the city. A muffled boom and a steadily increasing roar drowned out the noise of the traffic and the blare of horns. In nearby shops and homes, the televisions, radios, adult conversations, children’s laughter and babies ‘cries seemed to fade away as a sudden pressure began to build in the air around them. In local streets, people stopped what they were doing. Something was about to happen, something terrible. The sky darkened. For those that saw it coming there was no time to react, no time to warn others. A dreadful scream filled the air as three hundred and eighty-five tonnes of aircraft ploughed into the busy junction of Cumberland Road and the South Circular, destroying everything in a four hundred metre radius.
Kirsty Moore cowered in terror behind her sofa. Her balcony was littered with glass, her sun lounger torn to shreds, its stuffing still drifting lazily in the air. She had instinctively pushed herself away from the balcony rail when the man below had fired, tripping over the patio door frame and landing on her backside on the lounge carpet. It had saved her life. The balcony had exploded with bullets, the rounds shattering glass and brick and stitching a wild pattern into the ceiling above her head.
She crawled across the living room and scrambled behind the sofa. There she lay, hands clamped over her ears, her heart hammering in her chest, her body paralysed by fear.
Alex instinctively ducked when he heard the roar of the missiles as they rocketed upwards from behind his apartment block. He watched in horrified fascination as the Stingers homed in on the aircraft overhead and obliterated the wing. The plane lurched in the sky and disappeared from view, a stain of black smoke hanging in the air above West London.
He heard a scream and a long burst of automatic fire. Momentarily, Alex’s thought processes shut down. Just a few moments ago he’d existed in another world, a world where the sun shone warmly, a promise of a cold beer and a pleasant summer evening ahead with a pretty girl. But that world had gone, turned dark. Even the sun seemed to have lost its heat.
The ground shook beneath his feet, a deep rumbling that he felt in the pit of his stomach. Alex knew it was the plane hitting the ground, and that’s when his training took over. He drew his service pistol hidden in his rucksack, a ten millimetre Glock automatic, and chambered a round. He found his cell phone, noted the missed calls and speed-dialled his unit in Southwark. No signal. He yanked a police armband up over his arm and advanced quickly past the glass foyer to his apartment block. He reached the corner and peered around the brickwork.
He saw a dark-coloured mini-van, shrouded in a thinning cloud of white exhaust smoke. The three men climbing aboard did so almost casually, one of them clutching a black rifle. The mini-van’s engine roared into life and it crunched along the gravel drive towards the street. Their apparent lack of urgency was what struck Alex the most, what chilled him. They’d just taken out an airliner, for God’s sake, and killed hundreds. There was no time to call for backup – these scumbags had to be stopped. He brought his pistol up as the van eased along the driveway between the apartment buildings. That’s when he stepped out from cover.
‘Stop! Armed police!’
The driver saw the pistol and accelerated, swerving towards him. Alex fired twice, hitting the driver through the windscreen. He slumped over the wheel, the van veering to the left and colliding with the wall of the opposite building, grinding along the brickwork. Alex stepped back behind cover and, as the van drew level, he fired twice at the front passenger. The van roared past and careered across the main road, where it crashed into the side of a parked vehicle with a loud crunch of metal. The engine roared for another few seconds and then died.
For a moment an eerie silence blanketed the street. Then Alex heard a rough curse and he saw the third man, the one with the gun, scrambling to get out of the van. Alex ran across the road, just as the side door was wrenched open. He dropped to one knee, levelling his pistol. The man in the mini-van stumbled out and spun around. Seeing Alex, he brought his weapon up, his face contorted with rage. Alex shot him twice in the chest and the man flopped to the road, the gun clattering to the tarmac.
He moved forward carefully, weapon extended in front of him. They were all dead. He would have preferred to take at least one man into custody, but these boys weren’t coming in quietly. Besides, even dead men can offer up clues as to who and why, but a quick search of the bodies revealed nothing to confirm their identities. He picked up the automatic weapon from the ground, a Heckler-Koch 416 assault rifle, and unloaded it, shoving the magazine and two spares into the waistband of his trousers.
He ran to the apartment block, pulling his cell phone from his pocket; still no signal. He flung open the glass door, weapon at the ready and announced his presence. It was deathly quiet. He fumbled for his keys and entered his apartment, heading for the phone in the kitchen. The line was dead. He marched into the bedroom. At the back of the closet was a false panel, which he quickly removed. Behind that was a large steel gun cabinet. Alex unlocked it and placed the rifle and magazines inside. He ran back out to the hallway and up the stairs. When he reached Kirsty’s door, he heard sobbing inside.
‘Kirsty, its Alex, from downstairs. Are you okay?’ The sobbing stopped. Alex stepped away from the door. Maybe she wasn’t alone. ‘Kirsty, can you come to the door?’ Still no answer. ‘Kirsty, it’s me, Alex. I need to know you’re okay. Open the door, please.’
He heard movement inside and the door was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped inside. Kirsty was behind the sofa, back against the wall, clutching herself tightly. Her body shook with fear. Alex took a quick look around, holstered his weapon and marched into her bedroom. He returned with her duvet and wrapped it around her shoulders. Kirsty leaned into him and then the floodgates really opened. For several minutes her body shuddered with sobs. Alex held her tight, noting the damage to her apartment. Lucky, bloody lucky. No wonder the poor girl was terrified. He held her tighter, listening for the sirens of the response vehicles that must surely be on their way.
‘It’s alright, Kirsty. It’s over now.’ He checked his wristwatch: six o’clock. ‘it's over now,’ he repeated.
Alex had no idea that across Europe it was just beginning.
Whitehall: 6.00 pm
It was time. The final minutes seemed to have stretched into hours, but now the moment had finally arrived. Target One, bomb armed and pressure switch in hand, eased the UPS van away from the kerb.
At Parliament Square, the armoured black Jaguar carrying Anna Beecham, flanked by her two-vehicle police escort, swept past a mob of placard-waving protesters. Anna tried not to look but couldn’t help herself, saw the obscene hand gestures, heard the muffled filth that poured from the protesters’ twisted mouths beyond the bulletproof glass. What had she ever done to these people? She had asked herself that question a thousand times. There was no answer, other than the fact that they hated her for reasons of their own.
As they turned into Whitehall, Anna knew she’d made the right
decision in going to Greenwich. It’d felt good to get out, to escape Westminster and have a civilised day with decent people, meeting the parents and children. But now they were back in town, her raw nerves were exposed once again. They turned left into Whitehall, and Anna noticed that the driver had eased off the accelerator as they approached the black gates of Downing Street. Even her protection officers were glad to get behind that formidable barrier these days.
She was looking forward to a shower and a few moments with Harry before this evening’s dinner. They’d take a holiday soon, she decided, when Parliament goes into recess, perhaps the villa in Italy for some Mediterranean sun. Harry could certainly use a break and Anna longed to leave the pressure cooker of Britain behind them for a while. Or maybe longer, God willing. She reached down for her handbag as the Jaguar slowed for the turn into Downing Street. She pulled out her cell phone, tapped the text message and hit send: I’m home xx.
Target One turned the wheel to his left and touched the accelerator, cutting across the westbound traffic. Dead ahead, across the wide expanse of Whitehall, a three-vehicle convoy was turning into the security gates of Downing Street. A gift from Allah, Target One realised. If he was quick he might be able to get in behind them, drive the bomb into Downing Street itself...
In a moment of cold clarity, Target One realised the enormity of the task he was about to undertake and it filled him with an aching pride. Gone were the nerves and the shaking hands. The fear he’d felt only minutes before had slipped away, like the removal of a heavy coat. A calm descended upon him then, a calm unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Or would again. Muttering his last prayer, he floored the accelerator and powered the vehicle across the street, a cacophony of angry car horns trailing in his wake.
