Invasion

by Dc Alden

  The men near the fire escape doors were suddenly engulfed in flames as one of the doors buckled and flew inwards in a rush of boiling air. The crowd surged backwards again, desperate to escape the fire. For the damaged window, the renewed pressure proved too much.

  Salma was slammed against the glass and this time she felt it move, watched in terror as the top sill was suddenly wrenched out of its concrete housing. The window tilted outwards a few degrees and held there. Screaming filled the air. Salma felt her eyes drawn upwards. A single steel bolt seemed to be holding the frame in place and she watched in horrified fascination as it slowly buckled under the pressure. Her life was being measured out by a thin metal bolt; as long as it holds, she would live. But she knew it would not – could not – hold. The tears streamed down her face and she tried desperately to push herself away from the window, but it was no use. The bolt bent to almost fifty degrees, the concrete around it fracturing and crumbling. And then it was gone.

  The window buckled outwards and fell away beneath her body. Salma Nawaz, along with forty-four other employees, plunged five hundred and forty-six feet to their deaths.

  Firestorm

  Elsewhere across Europe, confusion reigned.

  As in Britain, major European cities experienced widespread power outages moments before hostilities commenced. In city centres and surrounding suburbs, traffic-signalling systems suddenly failed, causing many accidents and huge jams. Subway systems, trams and trains glided to a halt, powerless. For a few moments, people reacted in a manner typical of the long-suffering commuter. Many complained loudly about the state of the public transport system, while others merely shrugged their shoulders and took it in their stride. Some closed their eyes and settled into their seats or buried their noses in books and newspapers, resigned to the delay. Many reached for their cell phones to call friends and loved ones and were puzzled by the sudden loss of signal.

  In transport control centres across the continent, worried staff frantically tapped the keypads of dead telephones and lifeless computers as, one by one, all of their control and monitoring systems shut down. Panic increased further as emergency power systems failed to kick in. After several minutes, commuters packed inside stranded carriages began to feel uneasy. For others, trapped in subway tunnels deep underground, fear had already taken control as passengers clawed at doors, windows and each other to escape the claustrophobic blackness.

  In residential suburbs across Europe, people tinkered with televisions, checked telephones and repeatedly flicked the switches of lifeless air-conditioning units and household appliances. Frustrated and confused, they joined their neighbours to shrug shoulders and complain light-heartedly about the sudden loss of power. The comforting routine of everyday life had suddenly been turned upside down but things would return to normal very soon, they reassured each other.

  And then, without any warning at all, the chaos began.

  Kastanies Border Crossing, Greece

  Nico Panayides, his hands expertly flexi-cuffed behind him, sat on the car park asphalt with twenty-two of his colleagues and watched in horror as column after column of Turkish battle tanks rumbled through the rocky canyon and surged across the border into mainland Greece. Above them, attack helicopters nosed ahead of the armour, seeking out targets.

  Panayides felt he was living inside one of his nightmares. As senior Greek Customs Officer at the Kastanies international border crossing, it was he who was ultimately responsible for the security of this section of the Greek frontier. Here, in the steep valleys and jagged peaks of the Rhodope Mountains, Greek customs officials fought a continuous battle against cross-border infiltration, people-smuggling, drugs and weapons offences and all manner of illegalities and infringements. The border with Turkey was marked by sharp, rocky slopes and the fast-flowing Evros river, as it meandered for approximately two hundred and forty kilometres from the Bulgarian frontier in the north to the Aegean sea in the south. It was tough, dangerous country, but Panayides and his vigilant team of experienced officers had seen it all before at this busy border crossing.

  Busy. That was a word that, remarkably, didn’t apply that morning. In the four years since Panayides had been in charge at Kastanies, he’d seen hundreds of vehicles pass every single day in either direction, from huge articulated lorries to single mopeds and every size of vehicle in between. Every day, day in, day out, for the last four years. Except today.

  A few hours earlier, Panayides had been sitting in his office and checking the daily figures on his computer terminal. Since eight o’clock that morning, one hundred and forty-four Greek-registered vehicles had crossed into Turkey and seven had crossed from Turkey into Greece. Seven.

  Normally, the Greek checkpoint would expect to see at least two to three hundred vehicles pass in both directions through the border. But seven? He checked the terminal again. None of the Greek vehicles had returned, either. Now that was odd. Panayides picked up his binoculars and walked to the window. From his first-floor office he could see the Turkish customs post, a mile further down the road. Beyond the distant fences and barbed wire, the Turkish flag hung limply in the still evening air from the roof of the administration building. There was no queue of vehicles waiting to cross into Greece, no people bustling around the car park; it seemed extremely quiet, which was most unusual.

  Beyond the customs post, the ground rose steeply and the road disappeared, twisting around the foothills into Turkey itself. What was going on behind those hills? wondered Panayides. Despite Turkey’s entry into the European Union and the continual protests from Ankara and Brussels, Greek border controls had remained tight and ever vigilant. Personally, Panayides was only too happy to enforce Greece’s commitment to the security of her frontier with Turkey. It wasn’t that he felt any personal animosity to the Turks, but it was hard to forget the violent history and bad blood that existed between their countries. It was one of the reasons that the Greek government had resisted Turkey’s entry into the EU, but their concerns were ignored. Turkey was rich and powerful, and the bureaucrats in Brussels salivated at the thought of all that Turkish money flowing westwards. But the Greeks remained watchful. It would take many generations before they trusted their old enemy.

  Panayides was relaying his concern to Athens when, shortly before 7.00 pm local time, business began to pick up. He ended the phone call and went to the window. Several cars had begun to filter across the distant border and he scanned them with his binoculars as they approached Greek territory. The vehicles were Turkish-registered and, after pulling into the empty car park below Panayides’ window, the occupants got out. They were all men, some in pairs while others travelled alone. As the rules dictated, they headed towards the customs hall below him. Businessmen, assumed Panayides. They emerged a few minutes later, climbing back into their vehicles and continuing their journey into Greece. Panayides checked the log on his terminal. Still no sign of any Greek vehicles.

  Just before eight, a large coach with darkened windows crossed from Turkey into Greece and rolled into the car park. Panayides watched as the passengers disembarked, stretching and rubbing their cramped limbs. They looked like a football team, he thought, all dressed in the same red tracksuits. He was intrigued as to where they were playing and who. Panayides had always been a big soccer fan. He’d played regularly as a young man and had potential, or so he’d been told, until a knee injury forced him to give the game up for good. Now in his late forties, he was too old to play competitively. Too old and too fat, his wife liked to remind him. She could talk.

  There were about thirty of them, all Turkish nationals. Panayides watched as the footballers headed into the customs hall beneath him. The younger ones were smiling and joking around and the older guys with them were a little more stern-faced and serious. They must be the coaches and support staff. They wore jackets and trousers, but they still looked pretty fit. Just before they disappeared out of view, Panayides saw one of the older guys reach inside his jacket. As he did so, two of the youn
ger men turned to face the car park, their smiles gone, their eyes sweeping the area as if searching for something. One of the younger men said something to the older guy as they filed slowly into the building.

  It was at that precise moment that Panayides felt it. What it was he couldn’t quite place; a look, a whispered word, something. But it felt wrong. He decided to go downstairs and study the group from the observation room as they filed through the main hall. He picked up his radio and ordered one of his colleagues to run the licence plate of the coach. Slipping his cap onto his balding head, he made his way downstairs and along the corridor.

  As he reached the door to the customs hall, it flew violently open. Panayides stumbled backwards, lost his footing and ending up on his backside on the tiled floor. He caught a flash of red as several men rushed past him and pounded up the stairs. There were shouts, banging, and glass breaking. Before he could react, he was dragged to his feet and bundled into the customs hall, where somebody spun him around and slammed him against a wall, tying his hands expertly behind his back with a tough plastic tie. After a few seconds, the rest of his men were all similarly trussed up and facing the wall. It was only then that Panayides realised that the football team held weapons and the older guys had produced radios and were talking urgently into them. After a few minutes, Panayides and his colleagues were marched outside and grouped on the ground in the car park. That was roughly thirty minutes ago.

  In that time, several military trucks and tracked vehicles had crossed the Turkish border into Greece, while army engineers had dismantled the barriers and bulldozed the chain-linked fences on either side of the road. The Greek flag had also been removed. Panayides saw that the tracksuits of the football team had been replaced by camouflage uniforms. At least his instincts had been proved right.

  The ground beneath them began to rumble. Greek heads swivelled as the noise increased and echoed around the steep canyons. In the distance, accelerating past the Turkish border post, a column of armoured vehicles roared towards them. Panayides sat on the ground and watched the seemingly endless convoy snake its way past in a cloud of dust and continue on into Greece. He was filled with a mixture of fear and rage. Were they at war? How the devil did it happen? And why?

  The border was now wide open and, as Turkish troops jeered from the turrets and cabs of their vehicles, Nico Panayides wondered if he’d live to see the dawn of a new day.

  European Air Space

  While the surviving governments of the West screamed for information, undercover sleeper teams and deep infiltration units of the Arabian forces went to work. Using human assets working on the inside, or through sheer surprise and deadly force, transport control centres and major road and rail junctions were seized and secured by thousands of small but heavily armed groups of men and women. On targeted motorways, vehicles were blocked from joining the carriageways and motorists already travelling on them were encouraged to leave at the next exit, often by the sight of a large tanker or heavy low-loader truck slewed across the lanes and accompanied by bursts of automatic fire. No one needed telling twice. All major road routes across Europe were secured and quickly cleared. The Arabian advance teams were expecting traffic. Lots of traffic.

  Meanwhile, inside European Air Traffic Control centres, sleeper agents began their well-rehearsed diversionary tactics. As the power cuts across Europe forced ATCs to switch to emergency generators, smoke flares were thrown into empty rooms and stairwells. Fire alarms were tripped and bomb threats called in. Alarm spread quickly. As buildings were evacuated, air traffic control was hurriedly passed on to other ATC centres and airports, which suddenly found themselves in the grip of their own emergencies. Across the skies of Europe, aircraft were ordered to maintain holding patterns. In most cases, operational personnel inside the ATC buildings followed standard emergency procedures and filed outside, where they gathered in car parks and other designated areas to await staff roll calls. Most were unaware that, as they left their control rooms, their places were being taken by specially trained teams of Forward Air Controllers of the Arabian armed forces.

  The FACs settled into comfortable wheeled chairs, slipped on their communication headsets and quickly absorbed the information that glowed on the consoles in front of them. For the next two hours they had only one priority: clear the skies.

  In the air, pilots’ headsets hissed with new instructions delivered by unfamiliar voices. Despite initial confusion, the urgency of the controllers encouraged them to execute flight plan changes immediately. Hundreds of civilian passenger aircraft were skilfully diverted and landed as quickly as possible at the nearest airport that could accommodate them.

  On the ground, at the major airports of Paris, Lyon, Rome, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam and others, police and security units suddenly found themselves embroiled in deadly gun battles that raged around the passenger terminals. Terrified civilians and airport staff scattered across roads and motorways to escape the gunfire as control towers, fuel storage depots and other secure areas were assaulted and seized. The battles were over quickly and had cost half the lives of the sleeper teams. Yet, despite their own losses, they had managed to secure their targets and take up defensive positions inside. Like their Brothers and Sisters at other major airports across the continent, they waited patiently for the main Arabian forces to descend upon Europe.

  Paris

  Every major European city was rocked by a series of co-coordinated terror attacks that rippled across the continent. Army and Civil Militia units suddenly found themselves under assault in their own barracks while, on the city streets, police officers screamed for backup over lifeless communications networks.

  In the Spanish capital of Madrid, the high-security National Police Station on the Puerta Del Sol was devastated by a huge bus bomb, detonated a few moments after seven pm local time. As survivors staggered out of the smoke and rubble, fourteen Libyan commandos, armed with sniper rifles and dispersed along the high rooftops that overlooked the square, began opening fire. Nearby police and Guardia Civil units that responded to the blast suddenly found themselves in a war zone. Similar scenes were repeated all across Europe but, in terms of violence, Paris was to suffer the most.

  Several hundred sleeper agents had descended on the city centre throughout the day, travelling alone or in small teams from the bleak, soulless estates that ringed the French capital. At 7.00 pm, they created havoc. For the Algerians amongst the sleeper teams, and there were many, it was a night of remorseless revenge. While most hadn’t even been born at the time, all Algerians were aware of the 1961 massacre of nearly two hundred of their countrymen by the French police and security forces, most victims either beaten, shot or garrotted to death, while others were thrown into the fast-flowing River Seine. Now, sixty-eight years later, the Algerians would have their revenge.

  Nearly every police and civil guard station in the city centre was attacked. In most cases, heavily-armed sleeper teams took up positions around the target buildings and bombarded them with automatic weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades. In others, suicide bombers entered police stations under the pretence of reporting a crime. Once inside, with a muttered prayer or a scream of victory, they detonated their devices. Yet more sleeper teams began their deadly work inside the army and Gendarmerie Nationale buildings where they were employed. Guards were killed, keys were snatched, doors and gates unlocked, armouries broken into, weapons and vehicles stolen and human targets identified and killed. Anarchy consumed the city.

  The fires and explosions across the centre of Paris could be seen and heard for some distance. From the balconies of crumbling tower blocks in the crime-ridden suburbs, the disenfranchised, dispossessed and displaced residents that made up the lowest class of France’s social order looked out across the city at the countless pillars of black smoke that towered into the sky and the fireballs that mushroomed above the distant rooftops with every passing minute. But the spectacle did not fill them with fear. What they saw wasn’t death, or carnage o
r chaos; they saw motive and opportunity. And they sought revenge on a society that had cast them into concrete prisons, both poverty and despair their ever-present jailers. It was time to escape.

  At first they were just small groups, maybe ten or twenty youths, stoning panic-stricken motorists on the surrounding overpasses. Soon the numbers grew into hundreds and the hijackings began. Drivers and passengers alike, having escaped the horrors of Paris city centre, now found themselves being dragged from their vehicles and beaten. Some were lucky enough to scramble away from the mobs, their clothes in tatters and their bodies bruised and bloodied, but still able to make good their escape on their own two feet. Others were not so lucky.

  Across the Seine, in the western suburb of Nanterre, two quick-thinking girls, both students at the Universite Pantheon Sorbonne, had seen the distant fires and decided to escape the city. Their plan was to make for the forest of St Germaine and hide there until they could figure out what the hell was going on. In their small apartment they quickly grabbed a radio, some bottled water, bread and cheese, a torch and two sleeping bags. In the underground garage beneath the apartment block, they unplugged their Renault electric car from its lifeless recharging post and piled in. The power indicator told them that they were good for at least two hundred kilometres.

  The car accelerated up the ramp and out onto the street, heading north to intercept the A14 trunk road that would take them out of the city. The girls were terrified as cars roared past them, their occupants crazed with fear. They both screamed as another car overtook them with centimetres to spare, only to take a right-hand turn at high speed and roll, turning over and over until it collided with a shop front and burst into flames.

  Instinctively, the driver turned left. She knew that she was headed away from the motorway, but fear now dictated her actions. The girls found themselves driving along a residential street where grimy apartment blocks and graffiti-daubed walls lined their route. They turned left and headed north again, the road leading them deeper into a maze of dilapidated streets. Smoke drifted in the air. As they passed a wide avenue to their left, they saw cars burning fiercely across the middle of the road and a single body lay motionless on the ground. The girls cried in fear, the driver accelerating and wrenching the wheel hard right. As they careered around the corner at sixty kilometres an hour, they found themselves face to face with a thousand-strong mob marching on the city.