by Dc Alden
Farrell moved quietly away from the door and trotted down the ramp. He ducked through the false panel and sealed it from the other side, punching in the locking code. A minute later, he was down on the cavern floor.
The Tunnels
‘What’s the problem?’ demanded Brigadier Forsythe as he entered the control room, Harry following close behind.
‘Train carriage won’t move,’ Gibson replied. ‘We’ve got a green light on the panel but it’s just not moving.’
‘Keep trying.’
Through the glass wall they saw Trooper Farrell running towards them.
‘We’ve got movement in the basement corridor,’ he panted. ‘Someone’s trying to get access to the generator room.’
‘Could it be civilians? Stragglers maybe?’ offered Harry. He was horrified at the thought that there may be people trapped below Downing Street with all that destruction raging above them.
Forsythe shook his head. ‘Doubtful. No one knows about the tunnel system apart from a very small group of people with the highest clearance.’
‘Well, maybe it’s one of them?’
‘There’s one way of finding out.’
Forsythe flipped the power on a monitor built into the control desk. Harry and the soldiers gathered around the screen, which was split into numerous smaller images transmitted from the underground cavern and its tunnels.
‘This complex and parts of the tunnel system are covered by surveillance cameras. There’s even one in the generator room above us.’
‘There’s the train, Boss. Number four,’ said Gibson pointing to one of the images.
The Brigadier touched the screen and the picture instantly filled the monitor. They could all see a large, open train carriage with enough seating to carry about twenty people.
‘Picture looks rather hazy,’ observed Harry.
‘That’s smoke,’ said Gibson, peering closely at the black and white image.
‘Let’s try calling the train down again.’ He punched a command into the console. On the screen more smoke began to rise from beneath the unmoving carriage.
‘Something must have burned out underneath. Maybe the electric motor.’
‘We’ll have to move out on foot,’ declared Forsythe. ‘Let’s have a look at that generator room.’ He touched the screen again, returning it to its multi-camera view. He found the right screen and enlarged it. The room was empty, the camera set at a high angle facing the steel door at the top of the concrete ramp.
‘Seems quiet,’ observed Harry.
Forsythe shrugged. ‘Even if they did get in, they’d have to know about the tunnel system. I wouldn’t worry too much, Harry. I think we’re pretty safe down here for the time being.’
‘Detonate!’
The combat engineer, wearing thick headphones, clamped his eyes shut and depressed the rubberised switch on his remote control unit. The generator room door had been quickly and expertly assessed by the senior officer of engineers, a powerful charge rigged and the corridor cleared. Inside the CMC, Mousa crouched against the wall with his hands over his ears, while all around him his paratroopers did the same. The resulting explosion shook the ground beneath their feet and the loud blast echoed around the basement for several seconds. With the corridor still thick with dust, Mousa ordered the first assault team inside with orders to clear the now-accessible generator room.
‘Jesus!’
Harry almost jumped out of his skin as the screen turned to digital snow and the overhead explosion rumbled around the cavern. After a few seconds, the picture returned to normal. In the upper centre of the screen, what could only be the entrance to the corridor showed up as a white rectangle, throwing a shaft of pale light across the ramp. More thin shafts of light appeared, bouncing around the screen.
‘Assault team,’ warned Gibson. Several armed men charged into the room, torches slung beneath the barrels of their weapons, and took up defensive positions along the walls as the dust slowly began to settle. On the screen, another soldier entered the room.
It was clear from his poise and authority that this new arrival was a senior officer. Harry and the others watched in silence as the shadowy figure made his way slowly along the line of electrical power units as if he were inspecting a squad of troops, pausing here and there to glance behind a unit or leaning forward to read a display panel. He seemed to be taking an undue interest in the room, as if he were searching for something. Harry swallowed, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. The figure carried on past the power units and approached the workbench beneath the surveillance camera. He absently fingered the tools and rags on its surface and then glanced upwards, straight into the camera lens.
‘Busted,’ whispered Gibson under his breath.
‘Major Karroubi!’ bellowed Mousa, and seconds later his subordinate limped down the ramp. ‘Look.’
Karroubi followed his superior’s pointed finger and saw the small camera mounted near the ceiling below some overhead pipe work. ‘A camera, General.’
Mousa looked sideways at his deputy. ‘Indeed. Why do you think someone would install a camera in a room such as this?’ Karroubi pondered the question.
‘For observation purposes. Safety reasons maybe?’
‘I think not,’ replied Mousa. He turned away from the camera, inviting Karroubi to do the same. ‘Over there is a sophisticated alarm panel and there are smoke detectors along the ceiling. Why bother with a camera with such equipment in place?’ Mousa turned back to the camera. ‘Observe the angle of the lens. Does it point towards the electrical equipment on that side of the room? No. Its position and angle give it only one purpose.’
‘It points towards the door. A surveillance camera?’ answered Karroubi.
‘Correct. There is a hidden entrance to the tunnel system in this room. Get the engineers in here and rip this place apart. I want it found, Major, and quickly. Where is the SERTRAK team?’
‘On their way. Fifteen minutes out.’
‘Good. Have them standing by.’
Karroubi nodded curtly – salutes were forbidden in a combat zone – and hobbled up the ramp. Mousa wandered back to the far wall and looked up at the camera, staring hard into the lens.
Forty feet below the General’s boots, Harry and the others watched the frantic activity taking place behind the man who stared into the lens. Combat engineers were tracing pipes and cables, tapping the walls and floors for hidden or false panels. As they watched, the Arabian officer’s hand obscured the lens briefly. When it cleared, all they were left with was a view of the workbench. Forsythe straightened up. Harry saw the look on his face and his pulse began to rise.
‘Time to leave. How’s your fitness, Harry?’
He gave the Brigadier a tight grin. ‘With those bastards up there on our tail, I think I’ll have all the incentive I need to keep going. How did they get here so quickly?’
‘Their equipment and insignia mark them out as paratroopers. They probably landed close by, maybe Hyde Park.’
‘Paratroopers? Landing in London? How the bloody hell is it possible?’
‘Hard to believe I know, but you’ve seen the evidence for yourself. Those are Arabian troops up there and, judging by the speed and significance of their arrival, I’m guessing that you’re their target. We’ve got to move quickly.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ breathed Harry. The realisation that he was the target for a foreign military power chilled him.
‘It’s all about speed and distance, now,’ Forsythe continued. ‘We’ve got to get to that radio in Kensington Gardens as fast as possible.’
Harry gulped. With the train carriage out of service they were limited to how fast he could run, and that certainly wasn’t going to be fast enough. It was just over half a mile to the Buckingham Palace interchange and one-and-a-half miles from there to the disused building in Kensington Gardens. It would be tough going.
‘Let’s get on with it then,’ declared Forsythe. He reached behind the console and began snippi
ng at the coloured wires with a multi-tool. Video feeds suddenly failed, and lights went out across the control panel. ‘No sense in letting them know where we’ve gone, is there?’
Harry nodded in agreement. ‘Why don’t we just destroy it all?’ he asked.
‘Better to leave some of it working. They might try to figure it all out, get the trains running or the monitors to work. It could buy us a bit more time.’
Out on the platform, Forsythe gathered the soldiers around him. ‘We’ve got to slow them down, create a diversion, so we can put some distance between them and us. We’ll need to split up. Mike, you and I will escort the PM, plus one other.’
Gibson pointed to Farrell. ‘You’re with us. Get upstairs and set a couple of booby-traps, quick as you can.’ Farrell raced away towards the staircase.
Forsythe turned to Nasser and Brooks. ‘You two will have a tougher job, I’m afraid. You’ll need to leave a trail, lead them away from us using the other tunnel. When you get to Mill Hill, head west to Alternate One, any way you can. You’ve got the grid reference. Good luck, God speed.’
Gibson slapped Brooks on the arm. ‘Off you go, lads.’
Nasser turned to Harry. ‘Just wanted to say good luck, Prime Minister.’ He stepped forward and held out his hand. Without thinking, Harry took it. The soldier clamped both hands around his own and pumped it warmly. ‘See you out west.’
‘Good luck,’ Harry echoed, faintly embarrassed by the gesture.
‘Get moving,’ barked Gibson.
With that, the two soldiers disappeared into the mouth of the northbound tunnel. After a minute or so they were swallowed up by the darkness.
Forsythe turned to Harry. ‘Ready?’ Harry nodded. ‘Then let’s go.’
Gibson led the way, towards the westbound tunnel. At the entrance, he turned and gave a short whistle. Harry looked up and saw Trooper Farrell crouched on the gantry forty feet above them. Gibson keyed his radio headset. ‘We’re leaving.’
Farrell made his way down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time, and jogged over to the tunnel entrance. ‘I’ve rigged a small shaped charge in the room up there, connected to the light switch. It’s not massive, but it’ll scare the shit out of them when it goes. The other one is big, a pressure switch set under the gantry. More than three people on that landing and it’ll blow large.’
‘Nice work,' confirmed Gibson. 'Now, all of you get going up the tunnel. I’ll catch up.’
Forsythe nodded. ‘Let’s go, Harry.’
They set off at a brisk pace, somewhere between a fast walk and a jog, with Farrell taking point. Gibson watched them disappear around the bend and headed back to the control room.
He found the electrical fuse box that served the cavern lighting and, one by one, began popping the fuses, the large banks of ceiling lights going out above him, one after the other. As he pulled the last fuse, the whole complex was plunged into an inky blackness. Across the cavern, Gibson could barely make out the tunnel entrances, dimly lit by their faint blue lights. He made his way towards the westbound tunnel and disappeared into its dark mouth.
10 Downing Street
‘Well, anything?’
Mousa was growing increasingly impatient. The engineers had been searching the generator room for over thirty minutes and still they’d found nothing. He felt certain the escape tunnel was here somewhere, but so far they’d drawn a blank. The combat engineer captain standing before him shook his head nervously.
‘My apologies, General. Wherever the entrance is, it’s extremely well hidden. We’ll find it, though. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘Then don’t let me delay you,’ snapped Mousa, and turned on his heel.
The corridor beneath Number Ten was packed with heavily armed assault teams. They parted like the Red Sea as Mousa walked through them, none willing to meet his stern gaze.
Mousa took a seat in the CMC and lit a cigarette, studying the portable command console on the conference table before him. Somali-Bitruji had made it to London. He saw that the General was setting up his headquarters in Buckingham Palace. A wise choice. It would be hard for any Englishman to order an attack on such a culturally significant landmark.
‘The SERTRAK team is here,’ announced Karroubi, limping into the room. Mousa crushed his cigarette underfoot and went out into the corridor. There wasn’t much room in the tightly-packed space and he was about to order half the assault team out, when a hush descended over the paratroopers. Mousa turned towards the stairs and saw the first SERTRAK man enter the basement. SERTRAK (Search and Tracking) teams were feared above all others in the Arabian forces. Drawn exclusively from Afghan units, SERTRAK personnel were trained to seek out, track and kill in areas where their enemies would least expect them to live, let alone do battle. Some of the original members were veterans of the War on Terror at the turn of the century. Living deep in caves beneath the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan, the insurgents, as they were labelled back then, would crawl from their lairs at night to attack Government and Allied forces, engaging them on snow-capped rocky outcrops above three thousand metres or on the desert floor, where they would lie for days in man-sized ‘spider-holes’ to ambush their enemy. They were experts in fighting in dark and confined spaces, lethal with guns, knives and their bare hands.
As the war against the Infidel occupation continued, the resistance became more organised and their leaders formed the fighters into specialised units. They were given a new name, SERTRAK, and the unit had gone from strength to strength after a number of successful operations across the Middle East. After the rise to power of the Grand Mufti Khathami, they were absorbed into the Arabian Special Forces. These were men that would perform the impossible tasks, the men that would operate in places that regular troops would fear to tread. They had proved themselves to be tough, capable and intelligent fighters, and that was why Mousa needed them now.
The paratroopers assembled in the corridor watched the new arrivals warily. SERTRAK’s reputation had spread far and wide amongst Arabian forces over the preceding years and, although the soldiers that lined the walls considered themselves the elite, the men passing them now were a different breed entirely. The paratroopers were excellent soldiers, but soldiers none the less, trained and conditioned to operate in predictable ways. But the Afghans? Some said they were cold-blooded killers sent by the devil himself and the gruesome details of their operations, filtered down through the armed forces grapevine, left nobody in any doubt of their murderous prowess.
As the SERTRAK team made their way through the packed corridor, the airborne troops moved out of their path. They numbered fifteen altogether and their uniforms consisted of various mixtures of modern battledress and traditional Afghan clothing. Despite the summer weather they wore heavy, full battle-order webbing and backpacks from which hung an assortment of gear including ropes, clamps and various other items. Each man carried at least two weapons, ranging from small arms to man-portable mini-missile launchers. However, what most paratroopers noticed were the deadly array of knives that each man wore about his body. The knife was the weapon of choice when operating in darkness and the SERTRAK teams were experts in their use. Unconsciously, the paratroopers closest to the passing Afghans moved a little further back.
The SERTRAK leader was tall, well over six feet, his bearded face heavily scarred. He wore a sleeveless sheepskin jerkin over US issue combat jacket and trousers and cradled an AK-84 in his muscular arms. He saw Mousa in the doorway of the CMC and followed him inside. Out in the corridor, a murmur rose from the paratroopers as the last Afghan disappeared from view. Mousa smiled to himself. These men always created a stir wherever they went.
The leader introduced himself as Captain Haseeb and Mousa quickly briefed him on the situation. When the tunnel entrance was found, Haseeb was to enter first and capture the Infidel leader alive. The military escorts were believed to be British Special Forces. Haseeb could do what he wished with them.
Mousa watched as the big
Afghan briefed his team. Of all the people in the basement, Mousa was the only one not intimidated by these fierce mountain men. It was universally known across the Arabian armed forces that Mousa held close council with the Cleric himself, and this fact alone made him equally as intimidating, if not more so than the hardened killers gathered before him. After a few moments, Haseeb turned to Mousa.
‘General, my men are ready. If it pleases you, I have one or two operational requests.’
‘Go on,’ invited Mousa.
Haseeb outlined his wishes and Mousa nodded agreement. Major Karroubi was dispatched into the generator room, where he quickly cleared out the combat engineers. Still no luck, Karroubi reported. Haseeb barked an order and one of his men stepped forward with a small black box.
‘What’s he doing?’ Mousa asked.
‘He uses a multi-band receiver, to scan for sleeper transmitters. Our teams in France have had much success in finding government bunkers with this equipment.’
Mousa could have kicked himself. The transmitter issue was one concept he had initially approved during the earliest planning phases, but problems were encountered with their operation. The plan was quietly shelved but not before hundreds had been issued to deep-cover agents. He followed Haseeb and his team into the generator room, while the Afghan with the receiver unit extended a short aerial and walked slowly down the ramp, waving the instrument from side to side. A few metres behind, Haseeb turned to Mousa.
‘It is possible an agent may have secreted a transmitter in this room or its locality.’
‘Unlikely,’ Mousa countered.
An audible beep echoed around the room. The Afghan with the transmitter walked slowly towards one of the electrical cabinets; the volume and rapidity of the electronic signal suddenly intensified. Haseeb turned and nodded.
