by Dc Alden
As he approached the centre of London, Howarth visually scanned the
ground ahead. He was flying in a south-easterly direction, four hundred feet above the Edgware Road. Below and slightly to his right lay Paddington Green police station. Or what was left of it. Fires raged on every floor and, down on the ground, Howarth could see a huge mob surging beneath the A40 overpass. The darkness of Hyde Park slipped under the nose of his fighter as Howarth mentally mapped out his route. Head for the Whitehall area, check for distress signals, flares, anything that may indicate that there were high-level military or civilian survivors down there, then follow the River Thames east to Tilbury, turning north eastwards back to Mildenhall. Straightforward enough, but he certainly wouldn’t feel safe until his wheels hit the runway of a secure air base-Bingo! Three – no, four – targets had suddenly appeared a mile in front of
him. Howarth could see that they were slow-moving transport aircraft climbing for altitude, and their IFF transponders identified them as distinctly unfriendly. Howarth lit up the lead aircraft with his search radar and thumbed the launch button of his one remaining missile. It would be an easy kill.
Inside the lead troop transport, the pilot was reflecting on the success of the parachute drop on the Mall when his co-pilot shouted in alarm. The cockpit threat receiver was indicating that their aircraft had suddenly been illuminated by an enemy aircraft. Behind him, the other three aircraft in the formation also detected the powerful emissions and began to fire off chaff pods. The huge cloud of tiny aluminium strips would surely confuse any incoming missile. If one had been fired.
Howarth swore in frustration as his computer display registered a launch failure on his missile. He advanced his throttles and chased the slow-moving transport planes, arming his twenty-millimetre cannon. They were in a nice, tight formation. Perfect.
Carter Whitman was losing the battle to keep his wife calm. For over three hours they’d been trapped inside a Perspex capsule high over the River Thames and she was slowly coming apart. Carter hadn’t wanted to go on the London Eye, but his wife had promised to send the folks back home her Goddam digital movies, live and uncut. Of course, she didn’t stop to think that people in the States would have to drop everything in the middle of a work day to watch her stream her footage over the internet, but that didn’t worry her, no sir. And good ol’ Carter would be there too, smiling like a dummy for the camera and waving hi to her super-size clan back in South Carolina.
Hours earlier, Carter and his wife had queued up with the rest of the tourist sheep, paid for their exorbitantly-priced tickets and boarded the rusting, thirty-year old attraction, squeezing into a stuffy plastic bubble that creaked and groaned its way to the top. Goddam Brits. Couldn’t build a case of haemorrhoids worth a damn. Not that Carter disliked England. In fact, he loved all the castles and old buildings, the sheer Goddam history of the place. He’d made the trip over the Atlantic many times on business, but now he was retired he thought he’d seen the last of London. But oh no, his dear wife had dragged him over the Atlantic for one final holiday, and that was the reason for his mounting anger and frustration. Because Carter Whitman knew he’d never see home again.
When the capsule had shuddered to a halt, he hadn’t been unduly worried. As a regular visitor to Britain, Whitman was used to the dirty streets, the dilapidated and potholed roads and the decaying and overcrowded public transport systems that would be considered a disgrace in the Third World. And he was almost used to the rude and aggressive people and a customer service ethic that was so bad, Whitman imagined he was trapped inside a giant theme park dedicated to indifferent attitudes and bad manners. And no asshole seemed to speak English any more.
So the rusting, iron ring had popped a cog, so what? Being England, it would probably take some jerk-off an hour just to attend the call. He’d looked down at the ground where a crowd had gathered and several of the lower capsules were being evacuated. Of all the Goddam luck. Couldn’t have crapped out when their shitty capsule was near the bottom. Oh no, had to be here, right at the fucking summit, four hundred and fifty feet above the Goddam river. He forced a grin at his worried wife and contemplated a couple of hours in a packed, sweaty capsule overlooking the dirtiest, most expensive capital city in the western world. Shit.
But then came the explosions. They’d seen some, like the one that detonated somewhere along Whitehall across the river. Whitman had watched in horror as the explosion sent tiles, bricks and other debris spiralling into the air above the rooftops. The detonation had rattled the wheel and people had begun to scream. They’d seen the flames reach high into the sky all around them. Whitman had heard the volleys of automatic fire too. That was some serious shit. Occasionally smoke drifted across the canopy, obscuring their vision. Then night fell and panic swirled around the packed pod. Nobody had come to their aid. No cops, no fire department, nothing. It was anarchy out there.
Whitman slipped a comforting arm around his wife and held her tight.
‘Enemy aircraft! Seven o’clock.’
The flight leader was about to issue evasive manoeuvre orders to the other aircraft when two hundred rounds of explosive ammunition ripped through the skin of the fuselage and detonated around the cockpit. With both pilots dead and its controls shattered, the huge transport aircraft lurched to the left, losing height rapidly. Behind it, the pilot of the second aircraft flinched as the laser-like tracer rounds appeared from nowhere, shredding the plane in front of him. He also banked to the left. That was his first mistake. His second was to increase power as he craned his neck and scanned the night sky over his port wing. As the lead plane stalled, the pilot of the second aircraft accelerated through its tail fin, destroying his cockpit on the starboard side. The lead A400 military transport, its tail disintegrated, nose-dived towards the huge steel wheel below.
Whitman heard the thunderous ripping sound and saw the tracers flying over their heads. The capsule rocked as people finally gave way to their panic, screaming and pushing in sheer terror. He saw the sparks and flames in the sky above them. In the blackness he heard the roar of aircraft engines and the sound of screaming metal. He watched with mounting horror as a huge, burning aircraft loomed out of the darkness and headed straight for their capsule.
Whitman held his sobbing wife tight and chastised himself for his feelings of anger. The plain truth was, he loved her deeply, always had done, from the moment they had met. He was angry because fate had decreed that their lives would end in a dirty, piss-stained plastic box rather than in their beach-side home in Santa Barbara that they both loved so much.
Carter Whitman squeezed his eyes shut and kissed his wife gently on the cheek. His last thought was of the cool, blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Squadron Leader Howarth watched in horror as the aircraft crashed into the London eye, its turbofan propeller blades scything through several of the uppermost observation capsules. The remaining wreckage deflected off the top rim and hurtled to the ground, severing the steel backstay cables and exploding in a massive fireball. A huge sheet of flame blossomed around the giant A-frame supports, engulfing the London Eye in thick smoke. Jesus Christ, he hoped there weren’t people down there. Howarth banked his fighter around. One down, one severely damaged, two to go. The remaining transports had broken right and headed south on full power, screaming for fighter support.
Howarth closed the distance, the targets bright in his head-up display. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, he stopped. If he fired now, he could send both planes crashing into residential areas south of the river. He could kill hundreds, not just the aircrews in the transports. He slipped his fighter to the left and fired a short burst after the planes, the tracer rounds zipping a bare hundred feet past the port wing of the nearest transport. Howarth smiled grimly. The sight alone should make the bastards think twice about venturing over the capital. He brought the fighter around and headed back up the Thames towards the city. There was still a wounded transport out there.
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nbsp; He thought it was an optical illusion at first, so he pulled a tight turn above Vauxhall Embankment and came around again. It was no mistake. Howarth’s blood ran cold. The London Eye, burned and twisted with half its capsules shattered or missing, swayed drunkenly on its massive steel feet. And there were people in there, too. Howarth could see scores of pale faces pressed up against the Perspex of several capsules. As he watched with mounting horror, a capsule near the top swung free from one of its retaining rings and crashed against the steel framework, pitching its occupants through the broken Perspex. Some hit the water far below, while others cannoned off the structure and disappeared into the flames. But the destruction wasn’t over.
The London Eye had stood on the south bank of the Thames for nearly thirty years. In that time, the river had ebbed and flowed and seeped through the walls of the riverbank, soaking into the deep foundation piles. Far below the embankment pavement, the compression foundation was slowly being reclaimed by the murky waters of the Thames. In time, the whole structure would have become unstable and the attraction itself unsafe. The arrival of seventy-nine tons of free-falling military transport aircraft just speeded up the process. The few remaining backstay cables sheared away from the structure and, for a few moments, the huge wheel just stood there, swaying ever so slightly.
Underground, the twin factors of water erosion and the impact of the aircraft combined to fracture several piles at once. Without its retaining cables a pendulum quickly ensued, as the Eye swayed back and forth in the darkness. Seconds later, the huge retaining bolts broke free from their crumbling concrete housings and sent nearly two thousand tons of steel toppling into the dark waters of the Thames.
‘For the love of Allah, pull up!’
The pilot of the second transport gripped the control yoke with all his might, fighting the dying plane around him. When he’d punched through the tail of his flight-leader’s plane he’d automatically increased power and tried to gain height, activating the fire-suppression systems as alarm buzzers screamed inside what was left of the cockpit. The co-pilot was gone, along with his seat and a whole swathe of instruments. Sparks fizzed and spat from severed power cables and his own instruments were covered in a thin film of hydraulic fluid.
He banked the plane around, desperately trying to gain height. He only needed a hundred metres or so, just enough to bail out. Of course, that meant trying to keep the plane level while he tried to extract the chute from under his seat and put it on, but he’d deal with that when he had height and airspeed. He realised he had only a few seconds before the aircraft failed completely.
He was headed due east now, right over the Thames. Two of the plane’s engines began to cough and splutter. He eased back on the yoke, the wind screaming around him. Ahead, the twin columns of Tower Bridge were silhouetted against the night sky.
Half a mile behind, Howarth had the transport plane neatly bracketed in the gun sights of his F18. He could see that the plane was damaged, thin plumes of white smoke trailing from both starboard engines. He’d wait until it had cleared the city before firing. The plane would hit the river and, with any luck, the only casualties would be a few fish.
The transport plane was losing height fast. The pilot couldn’t lose any more airspeed for fear of stalling so, with one hand on the yoke, he reached for his parachute. He had a plan of sorts. Slip the chute on, pull the plane up as high as possible and jump through the gaping hole where his co-pilot once sat. Not the best of plans, but the plane was on its last legs. He glanced at his altimeter. It spun crazily around the dial, first one way and then the other. Useless. He’d have to get a visual reference. The canopy in front of him was cracked like a spider’s web and the window to his side was covered in hydraulic fluid. He had to hurry. He could feel the nose of the aircraft dipping rapidly. There was a fire to the southeast, but it was too far away to give him any idea of how high he actually was…
‘Jesus!’ Howarth cried. The transport plane in front of him disintegrated in a ball of flame as it struck the northern column of Tower Bridge. The tower itself crumbled, sending hundreds of tons of Portland stone crashing onto the roadway below. It was too much to bear. The road bridge arches gave way, twisting and falling into the river below. The southern tower, now fatally weakened by the loss of its sister, wrenched itself free and fell forward on top of the already-submerged wreckage of the road, the collapse causing a huge wave to wash over the riverbanks along the Thames.
In the space of a few minutes, two of London’s most famous landmarks had ceased to exist.
Squadron Leader Howarth advanced his throttles and turned northeast for Mildenhall. He was tired, completely drained. The adrenaline of combat had sapped his energy. Not only that, he’d also witnessed awful destruction across the capital and the subsequent loss of life. He knew the images would haunt him for the rest of his days.
He glanced out of his cockpit at the dark earth below. His thoughts turned to the people down there, on the ground. What must they be feeling? Fear, of course; panic, uncertainty… and pain. He didn’t even want to think about casualties. As his aircraft skimmed low over the Essex border, Howarth resigned himself to the fact that his country was at war and he had no idea why. All he knew was that many people had died today. He had no clue as to what the future held or even if he’d make it through the night. But if he survived the trip to Scotland, and if there was a decent airbase with a well-supplied armoury, and if there were spares for his F18...
If; the biggest word in the dictionary. But if all those things came to pass, well, he’d try and even up the odds for the people down there.
The paratroopers had assembled quickly into their designated units and fanned out across the shadows of St James’s Park. Each unit had its own objective. Several moved east towards Horse Guards Parade. Their job was to secure the northern end of Whitehall and for that task they were armed with anti-tank weapons, mortars and heavy machine guns. Another unit did the same at the southern end, taking up position at the junction of Parliament Square. A short distance away another small detachment, laden with specialist equipment, stayed out of sight in the darkness.
From the leafy fringes of the park, the main assault force sprinted across Horse Guards Road and ran up the wide, stone staircase into King Giles Street. They formed into two columns, each moving quickly up either side of the street, leaping over the broken timbers and rubble that littered the road. Above their heads, fires had taken hold in both the Treasury and Foreign Office buildings. The flames bathed the area in an orange glow, sending showers of sparks and burning embers drifting down on the night air.
At the junction with Whitehall, one column sprinted across the road and took up defensive positions along the wide avenue. The other column of paratroopers turned left, scrambling quickly through the deep bomb crater that marked the entrance to Downing Street. Without pausing, they picked their way quickly through the rubble and raced towards the most famous front door in the world, now scorched, splintered and hanging from a single brass hinge.
The assault team discharged several flash-bang grenades into the entrance and adjoining rooms and followed them in, weapons raised, trigger fingers poised. Moments later, the ground floor was pronounced clear. More assault teams hurried inside and began clearing the remainder of the building floor by floor. After several minutes, the all-clear signal was given.
From the darkness of the park, the small detachment of paratroopers waiting under the tree canopy made their way quickly into Downing Street. Striding purposefully through the entrance to Number Ten, a dozen or so figures, some laden with black, shockproof cases, walked briskly into the reception hall, where other paratroopers were already clearing rubble and broken furnishings from the floors under the pale glow of temporary lamps. Above them, the muted roar of fire extinguishers could be heard as more personnel tackled the flames on the upper floors. As they filed into the reception hall, the leader of the group stopped abruptly.
He gazed around the once-grand house
that had received and entertained world leaders for over two hundred years. And now here it was, scorched and wrecked beyond recognition. A pity. He would have liked to have seen it in all its glory. Still, no matter, there was work to be done.
General Faris Mousa continued into the Cabinet Room along with his Command Group personnel. The famous Cabinet table was swept clear of debris as Mousa’s staff immediately began cracking open their foam-lined cases and setting up their communications equipment. A captain approached.
‘General Mousa, we’ve found a body.’
‘Is it Beecham?’
‘No, General.’
‘Where is this body?’
‘Rear of the building, Sir.’
‘Show me.’
The two men made their way out into the garden. Other airborne troops were already out there, sweeping the grounds and establishing a security perimeter. The body was lying near the rear wall, a grey blanket draped over the still form. General Mousa squatted down and pulled back a corner to reveal a waxen corpse. He looked up at the captain, who was flipping through a sheaf of index cards. After a moment he handed one over.
