by Dc Alden
‘Anything, Mike?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘Can’t raise anybody, Boss. Evac teams are not answering, there’s no acknowledgement from Mill Hill and I can’t raise any air assets at Northolt at all. Alternate One is also off the air. It’s like the whole network’s down. I’m running through all the frequencies now, both civilian and military.’
Forsythe looked over at Brooks, who shook his head. ‘I’ve tried every number in the emergency directory. Nothing.’
‘Keep trying,’ urged Forsythe. He turned to Harry. ‘If we can’t raise anyone then we have zero chance of getting you out of here using the pre-planned procedures. Can’t call up a chopper, you see. It also means that no one knows you’re alive and that could have its own consequences. Who takes over in the event of your incapacitation?’
‘Deputy PM,’ explained Harry. ‘If not him, then the Home Secretary. If that’s not an option, then the Foreign Secretary.’
‘All of whom could be dead,’ Forsythe speculated. ‘I’d feel far more confident if people knew you were alive. The civilian population will be panicked, frightened. They’ll need reassurance and the only way to do that is to get you on the air. Alternate One is still our best option I think, so we have to try and get you there. In the meantime, you should make use of the facilities while we try to establish communications. Come, let me show you.’
A few minutes later, Harry was sitting at a small table nursing a hot cup of tea. The kitchen was small but it had fresh running water, cooking facilities and boxes of canned and dried goods stacked high along one wall. Forsythe was eating something from a tin that looked decidedly unsavoury to Harry.
‘It’s going to take a while to power up the train and run through the checklists,’ he said. ‘Then we can get moving.’
‘Don’t let me keep you, Giles.’
‘There’s a rest room next door, with a sofa. Why don’t you sit down for a while, try and relax? It could be a while before we’re ready to move and you’ll need the energy when we do. Things could get rough.’
‘Good idea,’ said Harry, getting to his feet. ‘Call me if you hear anything.’
‘Of course.’
Harry wandered into the rest room and slumped onto the sofa. What had caused all this? Was the country really at war? Or was it a series of terrorist attacks? If so, why and by whom? The heat of the room leaked into his limbs and Harry’s eyelids began to droop. He felt absolutely drained, the adrenaline that had coursed through his body for the last few hours taking its toll. He tried to fight his drooping eyelids and failed.
In the darkness of sleep, Anna haunted his dreams.
The radio hissed and crackled, then a cold voice echoed around the room.
‘Your attention, please. This is a public safety message broadcasting on all frequencies. Due to the ongoing emergency, members of the public are advised to remain in their homes. Martial law is now in effect and all public services, including transport networks, have been temporarily suspended. I repeat, all civilians are to remain in their homes or alternative places of shelter. Stay tuned to this station for further information. This ends this public safety message.’
‘Jesus, it’s really happening,’ whispered Forsythe.
Harry let the shower jets wash away the last vestiges of tiredness. The nightmare had been a bad one, but nightmares happen and he’d just lost is wife. All perfectly natural, he tried to reassure himself.
He turned off the water and towelled himself dry. Forsythe had left some fresh clothes for him, scrounged from a storeroom packed with military supplies and equipment. Harry wasn’t sure that baggy black trousers and a combat jacket were particularly fitting for a Prime Minister, but they were an improvement on his shredded suit and bloodied shirt.
Freshly attired, he made his way out into the main cavern. Through the glass of the comms room, Harry could see Forsythe, Nasser and Brooks gathered around Mike Gibson. He saw Mike’s mouth move, speaking into the wrap-around microphone that framed his jaw. They’d made contact, thank God. He walked quickly into the room. Forsythe looked up and raised his hand for silence.
‘Roger that, Alpha Two-Zero-Nine. Next transmission in three-zero minutes. Out.’ Gibson slipped the headphones off.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Harry.
‘Alternate One is up and running,’ Forsythe explained. ‘Due to signal jamming they’ve been transmitting on one of the more obscure UHF bands in the higher ranges. They’re changing frequencies every half hour. We’ve got the pattern.’
‘That’s excellent news.’
‘There’s more,’ the Brigadier continued ominously. ‘Mike found something else, on the civilian network. It’s still transmitting. Mike?’ Gibson flipped a switch and held the headphones out to Harry, who clamped them over his ears. At first, all he could hear was the hiss of empty ether.
‘Your attention, please. This is a public safety message…’
Harry stood tight-lipped as the broadcast finished. He slipped off the headset.
‘Who the hell is it?’ he asked incredulously.
‘No idea,’ Forsythe shrugged. ‘It’s on every civilian frequency. Anybody with a working radio out there will hear it.’
‘If we’re not broadcasting it, then who is?’
Forsythe folded his arms, a deep frown creasing his forehead. ‘Sounds like an attempt at a power grab.’
‘A coup,’ Harry breathed.
‘Sounds incredible I know, but to all intents and purposes that’s a government-sanctioned message. The word will spread quickly. People will believe control is being restored. From an enemy perspective, it keeps casualties down and makes it easier for their troops to move around without columns of potential refugees blocking the roads.’
‘For God’s sake Giles, you make it sound as if we are being invaded.’ Harry’s voice cut short. He suddenly realised that Forsythe was describing exactly that.
‘Alternate One have filled in a few blanks. At approximately eighteen hundred hours GMT, they started registering comms failures at our Joint Services nodes-’
‘English, please Giles.’
‘That means the military network started to fail. Satellite comms, telephones, computers – everything. Before it failed, operators managed to record a series of garbled messages that began swamping the networks. The reports told of armed men taking control of buildings, shootings outside various military establishments, a truck bomb at an army base in Colchester and numerous other incidents. One by one, all of our major military bases started dropping off the air. Same for the police, but not before they received a deluge of incident reports; bombings and shootings across the country, attacks on dockyards on the south coast and even reports of two airliner crashes, one in West London and one near Tottenham Court Road. It would also appear that many essential services have been hit. Water supplies have been cut, along with gas and electricity across most of England and Wales, and the civil emergency services are no longer functioning. It’s a planned strike, Harry, without any doubt. A series of coordinated attacks designed to cripple our military and police forces and keep the civilian population out of the picture.’
Harry sat down heavily in a chair, the information bearing down on him like a physical weight. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Alternate One believes it can only mean one thing.’
For the first time since hostilities had begun, Harry thought he detected the tiniest note of despair in the Brigadier’s voice. ‘They think that these are the opening moves of a full-scale military invasion.’
‘Arabia,’ said Harry.
‘Correct.’
Why on earth would Arabia want to initiate a war against Britain? Relations had been good over the last decade. Granted, they were never cosy, but there was a mutual respect there. Besides, there were over eight million Muslims in England and Wales. That was nearly fourteen per cent of the population. Surely that bought the Government some leverage with the Holy state? And Geoffrey Cooper – he’d made g
ood progress with their diplomats, had been their guest several times both at the Arabian embassy and out in Arabia itself. Things had been going so well. If the slightest hint of trouble had been brewing he would have known about it. And their military build-up. Surely that would have been noticed? Harry found it hard to believe, but this wasn’t the time for an in-depth analysis.
‘Who’s in charge at Alternate One?’ he asked.
‘Major-General Julian Bashford is co-coordinating the Joint Services response. There are several other key personnel, plus one or two of your ministers who were ferried there by helicopter. The surrounding area is secure and under heavy guard and they’ve had no trouble to deal with as yet, although I suspect that’ll change. The intelligence types have been sifting through what little information there is available, but they believe that the main threat appears to be from the southeast of the country. They’re ordering any military units that are still operating to head to the west of England or north to Scotland, whichever’s closest; but they have to broadcast that message using Morse and clear speech. It looks like the General is shortening his defence line, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the country.’
No, it bloody well doesn’t, echoed Harry silently. He tried to focus on the positives. At least there was a functioning command and control centre manned by experienced personnel.
‘What happens to us? How do we get to Alternate One?’ he asked.
‘Well, Northolt airfield is out of the question. We’ve been advised to take the train into Kensington Gardens. Once there, we’re to make radio contact again. Our priority now is to get out of Whitehall. Mike?’
‘Boss?’
‘Let’s get that train down here ASAP.’
Assault
They approached from the west at just over four hundred kilometres per hour. Eighty kilometres from their target, they descended from two thousand metres to level off at one hundred and fifty, quickly reducing their airspeed.
In the lead aircraft, the Jumpmaster, listening intently to the instructions crackling inside his headset, gave the thumbs-up signal to an airborne forces officer, who barked a command. The airborne troops, laden with heavy battle-order equipment and bulky parachutes, struggled to their feet. They were glad to be finally up and moving after a flight of nearly six hours. Their journey was almost at an end and no paratrooper enjoyed waiting inside a fat, heavy transport plane in a combat zone. They stretched their limbs to get the circulation going and carried out final equipment checks.
The night air whistled around the cargo bay as the huge tailgate of the A400 transport plane was lowered on hydraulic arms and locked into its jump position. Below them, the ground passed quickly under the silver light of a new moon. This was when the aircraft was at its most vulnerable. Although the pilots had been informed enemy air activity was negligible, they had also been advised to stay alert. There were rogue fighters still out there, looking for targets. On the ground, Forward Air Controllers reported empty skies above the drop zones, but the pilots sweated in their green jump suits anyway. They’d rehearsed this mission many times, both in simulators and in actual field exercises, but the real thing was always different.
There were ten aircraft in all, flying in two sticks of five planes just under a mile apart, carrying a mixture of paratroopers, light armoured vehicles and jeeps. There were hundreds of other aircraft in the sky that night, all heading towards their various targets across southern England and the Midlands. Their job was to secure and protect the airfields, clear the runways and bring the rest of the invasion force in along safe air corridors, guided in by FACs in captured air traffic control centres.
At eight kilometres to target the paratroopers shuffled forward, dragging their parachute harness hooks along thick static lines secured to the aircraft’s fuselage. They watched for the green indicator light, their eyes occasionally flicking to the ground rushing below them. If death waited for them down there, then so be it. They were ready.
Behind them, aircrews rigged pallets and checked running rails, ensuring that vehicles, supplies and munitions would be deployed safely and correctly behind the disembarking troops.
Over the drop zones, pilots activated green lights. One by one, the paratroopers stepped off the ramp and were plucked away into the night sky. When the last man had jumped, the equipment pallets were shoved off by tethered aircrews. As each plane disgorged its load, the pilots applied full power and climbed for altitude, turning on a southerly heading for the coast.
At Heathrow Airport, on the outskirts of West London, hundreds of paratroopers floated to the ground. They released their harnesses and quickly formed into units, racing for their pre-arranged rendezvous points. Each unit had a specific objective and the paratroopers achieved them with quiet, determined professionalism. Within thirty minutes of the first landings, all five terminal buildings at Heathrow had been secured. Elsewhere, the airports of Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton, and Birmingham were also captured without major incident and their main runways swept by combat engineers of the Arabian airborne forces. The path was now clear for the main invasion force and, within minutes of the confirmation order, transport planes and their fighter escorts began to lift off from military bases all across the Arabian Peninsula.
There were four other planes in the sky that night, on a wholly different mission. These aircraft flew north-eastwards across southern England, each carrying a detachment of specialist Pathfinder airborne forces. Over the darkened suburbs of London, the four transport aircraft swept in low towards their target. They approached from the west, their path lit by the fires that raged across the city skyline. Inside the aircraft were the elite of the Arabian airborne units, four hundred men specially chosen for this most important of missions. Even the aircrews were hand-picked, the most skilful and competent pilots, navigational experts and Jumpmasters in the Arabian Air Force. The pilots scanned their instruments as they jinked their aircraft up and down, left and right to avoid the blaze of light and updraughts from the fires below.
The timing had to be right. It was to be an extremely low-altitude opening for the paratroopers, only sixty metres, using a recently developed low-deployment system. Each soldier had trained continuously for the last three months, the aircrews even longer. Precision flying was called for and, with it, no small amount of courage.
Their Drop Zone was the Mall, the wide, tree-lined avenue that ran from the front gates of Buckingham Palace to Admiralty Arch at Trafalgar Square, a ceremonial route used by British royalty for the last two centuries. Just under a couple of kilometres long and thirty metres wide, it was going to be very tight, but the men were well trained and the mission was an important one. The risk was acceptable.
With four kilometres to go, the planes bounced up and down in the roiled air over South Kensington and then banked left to avoid a huge fire close to Victoria Station. The pilots lined up on their target and pulled back on their throttles as, one by one, the transport planes roared over the roof of Buckingham Palace, the Mall directly below them. In the cargo bay of each transport, a green light blinked on. The planes disgorged their troops then clawed for height, thundering out over Admiralty Arch towards the Embankment and the River Thames.
He was first out of the lead aircraft, as he should be. His chute deployed perfectly and its layered ram-air configuration stopped his rapid decent towards the ground below with a few metres to spare. He stepped lightly on to the tarmac and unhooked his harness, racing towards the cover of St James’s Park. In less than a minute, all four hundred of his men had made it to the ground and were moving swiftly through the shadows towards Horse Guards Parade. All that remained of their passage was the faint hum of the departing transports and the soft rustle of hundreds of discarded parachutes, as a gentle night breeze swept along the deserted Mall.
Squadron Leader Robert Howarth searched desperately for a target for his final AIM-120 AMMRAN air-to-air missile, slung under the port wing of his F18E Hornet fighter jet. He’d got one kill al
ready, an enemy fighter that had blown his wingman out of the sky before either aircraft had a chance to react. What had started out as a standard training mission over the Thames estuary had turned into a fight that had already claimed the lives of most of his squadron and half of his ground crew at RAF Mildenhall in the eastern county of Suffolk.
The attack had started at six o’clock that evening, when a car bomb had been driven through the gates and detonated. After that, three or four van-loads of armed men had entered the base and attacked the buildings and personnel with automatic weapons and grenades. Luckily, a company of RAF Regiment soldiers had been queuing up outside the base armoury after returning from a live-fire exercise at the Thetford Forest training area. The soldiers were quickly issued with fresh ammunition and deployed to counter the threat. They succeeded, but not before many of the squadron’s planes were destroyed and most of the Royal Air Force ground crew killed. The base had been saved but it had been touch and go for a while. Howarth had been one of the lucky ones.
The Squadron Leader banked his plane, bringing the nose around to head due south over London. It was a surreal sight. From the air, the city normally shimmered like a carpet of a billion lights. Now only darkness lay before him, punctuated by hundreds of fires below and a moon above that ducked in and out of some high-level cloud. Howarth thought the scene reminiscent of the German air raids on London during the Second World War. He cruised at an altitude of four hundred feet, his air-search radar shut down to avoid announcing his presence to enemy fighters. Only his threat receiver was fully active and this was his third pass over London without a target. And Howarth desperately wanted a target.
About an hour ago, a call sign had responded to his repeated transmissions and given him a quick brief of the military situation; all British units had been ordered to disengage and regroup either north of the border in Scotland or west beyond Salisbury Plain. After confirmation of the transmission, Howarth had declared his presence, indicating his rough position and fuel state. He was ordered north to Scotland, but not before he carried out another mission. Using his on-board systems, he was tasked to fly to London with strict instructions. Gauge enemy strength and air assets, check for ground forces, major structural damage, enemy movements, then head back to Mildenhall. The base was being wound down and everything useful that couldn’t be moved was to be destroyed. Howarth was to re-fuel there and then head north. The remaining troops and ground crew would be leaving in a blacked-out convoy at twenty-three hundred hours.
