by Dc Alden
He ran a hand up to the webbing pockets across his chest. In one he found a single fragmentation grenade, in the other a green smoke canister. His hopes rose slightly. If he could create enough confusion and, if his luck held, he might just make it out alive. He moved his head slowly, peering beneath the rim of his helmet. The big man had moved to his left, only part of his shoulder barely visible. There was somebody else to his right, again only half-visible. This was his chance. Silently, he holstered his pistol; then, one after the other, he extracted the pins from the grenades.
Haseeb waited impatiently for his two scouts to report back. Behind him, his men had fanned out along both sides of the tunnel walls. It was a pity that the life of the Prime Minister was to be spared. It would have been a good kill, one to add to the many he’d made during—
His earpiece crackled and Haseeb winced as Mousa’s voice barked into his ear.
‘Haseeb, we have reviewed the surveillance tapes from the drone. It was disabled from behind. Acknowledge!’
Haseeb spun around, fingers tightening around his rifle. His men squatted along the tunnel walls, awaiting his orders. A few metres away, the shattered drone spat sparks. If it had been disabled from behind, then surely they would have made contact with whoever had—
Two things happened, almost simultaneously. For the first time, Haseeb noticed the nearby alcove in the tunnel wall. He’d seen them before, of course, but dismissed them immediately as tactically inept places to hide, especially for a small group who were running for their lives. The second thing that happened was the sudden appearance of two small objects that sailed out from the recess only a few metres away. The objects bounced across the tunnel floor. There was no time to escape.
As he lobbed the grenades, Forsythe ducked his head and pulled his pistol. Seconds later, the detonation of the grenade almost burst his eardrums and he felt a sharp pain in his left shin as a white-hot fragment of metal buried itself deep into his flesh. The tunnel quickly filled with thick green smoke and he heard screaming and angry shouts.
Keeping low, he crawled forward out of the alcove and turned to his left. A burst of machine gun fire raked the tunnel wall around his head, soon joined by another. He heard screaming close by and found the source: an Afghan soldier clutching his groin in agony. Forsythe crawled up over his blood-soaked legs and then across his torso. He jammed his pistol in the man’s chest and fired twice. The body went limp beneath him and he tore the man’s machine pistol from his shoulder strap. He heard voices shouting behind him as thick green smoke swirled around the tunnel.
Forsythe kept moving, crawling away from the smoke towards the distant platform. Soon, the green fog began to thin out and through the haze he could see the lights of the tunnel wall. Now the enemy was behind him. He rose to his knees and checked the weapon. A full magazine; good. Forsythe thought the odds were beginning to stack in his favour.
Apart from the screams and moans of the wounded, he could hear no more firing. The enemy troops were obviously afraid of hitting each other in the confusion and, before the smoke fully cleared, Forsythe decided to create some more havoc. He set the weapon to full auto and raked both sides of the tunnel with two long bursts. He threw the empty weapon to one side and headed towards the platform, rewarded by the sound of fresh screaming.
Ahead of him he saw see a pair of boots. They were splayed at an awkward angle and Forsythe realised the man was dead, killed by a grenade by the look of his wounds. He quickly scooped up the man’s weapon, turned and fired again across the whole width of the tunnel, keeping his shots low. This time he was answered with a short burst of fire that whizzed over his head and chewed up the concrete ceiling behind him. Forsythe cut across the tracks, trying to keep one step ahead of the enemy. He moved forward, a little more quickly now, eager to escape.
Another movement ahead caught his eye and he dropped to one knee and fired his pistol. The figure cried out and hit the floor hard. He heard a scrape behind him and turned to see another soldier dragging himself along the ground, a slick trail of blood on the floor behind him.
Forsythe surged forward. He had taken three or four steps when he lost his footing. He came down hard, his helmet spinning loose from his head and he cried out in pain as his right arm shattered on the concrete floor. His pistol skidded away from him under the impact. Then he felt a vice-like grip encasing his ankle and he spun around in alarm. His fear increased as the final wisps of green smoke evaporated to reveal the fearsome, bloodied mask of the big Afghan he’d seen earlier. Forsythe pulled back his other foot to kick him in the face but, before he could, the Afghan buried a large knife into his left calf muscle. Forsythe screamed in agony.
Haseeb dragged himself to his knees, the Infidel’s ankle still locked in his huge fist. He brought the knife down again and again, the thick blade shredding the soft flesh under the Infidel’s trousers and scraping agonisingly against the bone. The effort was excruciating. Haseeb’s body was peppered with grenade fragments and a bullet had lodged under his armpit. Blood coursed down his face from several fragments in his head and his beard was slick and matted with dark blood. It was only pure hatred that kept him moving. He had failed, he knew that. The majority of his SERTRAK team lay dead or wounded, taken out by a single man, the man that lay before him. It was this white-haired Infidel that was the cause of his downfall. He crawled forward over the Infidel’s body.
Forsythe tried to fight the man off as the weight of his body crushed his butchered calf. Never had he known such pain. He saw the knife rise up and screamed as it plunged into his stomach, then again between his ribs. A hand gripped his webbing and the big man, the leader, muttering through blood-soaked teeth, dragged himself over Forsythe until he straddled his torso. The Brigadier felt his strength fading fast. He brought his hand up to his chest, keyed his radio several times, then set it to permanent send. His arm dropped to his side.
‘Your friends cannot help you now, Infidel,’ hissed Haseeb. ‘The time of your death has come.’
With each word, blood sprayed across the Infidel’s face. Haseeb’s breathing was laboured now. He thought the bullet might have penetrated a lung because it was getting hard to breathe, but he still had time. He fumbled with the fastenings of the Brigadier’s body armour and he tore it off. With a huge effort, Haseeb raised the knife in both hands and punched it deep into the Infidel’s chest. The old man’s head came off the ground, his eyes as wide as saucers as his body doubled under the impact of the blow. He let out a blood-curdling scream and Haseeb raised the knife and stabbed him again. This time the Brigadier went limp, the knife sunk to its pommel in his bloodied chest.
Exhausted, Haseeb slumped sideways and sprawled on his back, his energy spent. Death would come for him soon. Darkness closed around his peripheral vision and he prayed that Allah would welcome him into paradise. He heard footsteps close by and the next moment two of his men were kneeling by his side. Ah, the scouts. They began to treat Haseeb’s wounds, rummaging for field dressings and medicines in their personal kit, but they were wasting their time. Haseeb could no longer feel his legs, a sure sign of massive blood loss. Soon his heart would fail.
As his men busied themselves, the Afghan wondered briefly what they had discovered, then dismissed the thought. It was of little concern to him now. Others would take up the pursuit. Allah had other plans for him.
Haseeb didn’t react when the first soldier’s face disappeared in a red spray of blood and tissue, but he roared in pain when the other man was similarly despatched and dropped onto Haseeb’s shattered body. Moments passed and his breathing became more laboured. A shadow fell across his face and he looked up to see a silhouette looming over him. Another Infidel. He smiled. So be it.
Mike Gibson’s eyes roamed the tunnel. The two mid-range headshots had been fairly easy, but Gibson was sickened to see the knife that protruded from Forsythe’s chest. He stood over the big Afghan and drew his pistol. As the wounded man closed his eyes and began to mutter something un
intelligible, Gibson shot him in the mouth.
He looked around at the devastation and was quietly impressed. The Boss had managed to take out a whole squad of troops. A quick scout around revealed that two of the men around him were still alive, but only just. Three blood trails led away from the scene of the action and Gibson decided to let them go. But there was something he could do.
Gathering grenades from the corpses, he booby-trapped several enemy bodies in the immediate vicinity. It was a distasteful task, but the situation was becoming increasingly desperate and he needed to buy as much time as possible. When he’d finished setting the explosives, he leant over Forsythe’s body and quickly pulled the knife from his chest, flinging it to one side. He tugged a single dog tag from around the Brigadier’s neck, slipped in into his pocket and headed back to the platform.
‘General, we’ve lost contact with the SERTRAK team.’
Mousa scraped back his chair and walked swiftly over to the command screen. He could see the glowing icons that represented the individual SERTRAK members in the tunnel near the crashed drone, but they were not moving and all attempts to communicate with them had failed.
‘Get another drone up that tunnel fast. And get Major Karroubi on the line. I want a company of paratroopers right behind it!’ Mousa walked back to his chair and kicked it hard across the room. He suffered a fleeting bout of panic, realising that his quarry, once tantalisingly close, might now escape. That was unacceptable. Mission failure would be more than a personal blow. It would also dent his credibility with the highest power in all of Arabia. He looked at his watch. The sun would be up soon. Mousa had a dreadful feeling that, with the coming of daylight, the British Prime Minister would be lost to him, maybe for good. He was racing against the dawn.
He checked the command display again. The tunnel headed northeast towards another so-called royal palace, this one in Kensington Gardens. He barked another order.
‘Al-Bitruji! Have two companies of your men proceed to Kensington Palace. Order the engineers to take it apart and find the entrance to the tunnel system. There must be one there. Hurry!’
Al-Bitruji complied, finding it difficult to keep the smile from his face. For the first time since he’d known the man, he thought he detected a hint of panic in Mousa’s voice. This mission was everything to the arrogant bastard, and failure might not be taken lightly by the Holy One. Perhaps it would be his downfall. If that were so, then Al-Bitruji would gladly see it happen. There was still a hand to be dealt here, he thought. If he played that hand correctly, maybe he himself would replace Mousa at the right hand of the Cleric. This could be the opportunity he had waited for.
Within a few minutes, troop transports and armoured vehicles began to roll out of Buckingham Palace, roaring up Constitution Hill towards the dark expanse of Hyde Park.
Inside the windowless concrete room, Harry and Farrell heard the clang of the steel door at the bottom of the staircase far below them. The sound made Harry jump, rattling his already-frayed nerves as he paced backwards and forwards. Farrell went down a couple of flights and returned a moment later.
‘It’s Mike, Sir. Looks like he’s on his own.’
Farrell sat down at the single table on which sat a sophisticated military radio set. There were several other monitors built into the wall above the table, each linked to surveillance cameras surrounding the small building in which they now waited. A few moments later Gibson entered the room, breathing hard.
‘Anything?’ he gasped.
Farrell shook his head. ‘Not yet.’
Gibson then briefed Harry on recent events. Harry leaned against the wall, rubbing his tired eyes with balled fists. So much death. God only knew what it was like across the rest of the country. He shivered, despite the stuffiness of the room, and Gibson laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder.
‘You okay, Sir?’
Harry nodded. This was no time to start dwelling on the lives that had been lost on this awful night. He had to keep it together. ‘I’m alright, Mike. What now?’ Gibson jerked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘No contact with Alternate One yet and the sun’ll be up in about an hour. If we can’t raise ’em by then we’ll have to hole up elsewhere during daylight hours. Of course, if we leave here we won’t have an encrypted radio set, which means we won’t be able to raise Alternate One. In that case, we’ll have to head west on our own.’
Harry nodded grimly. ‘How would we-’
‘Contact! Alternate One, we are receiving you, strength five by five, over!’ Farrell turned and gave them the thumbs up, a wide grin on his face. Harry was summoned to the microphone and his voice-print quickly confirmed. Gibson took the headset next, nodding several times. He asked a few pertinent questions then broke the link. He wrenched the power from the radio and smashed it on the ground, kicking the shattered components around the floor. Harry was horrified.
‘For God’s sake, Mike! What if-’
Gibson cut him off. ‘We’ve got our orders and we can’t leave the kit intact for obvious reasons. We’ve got to move now. This may be our only chance of getting out of the city before it’s too late.’
‘What about your other colleagues? Brooks, is it? And the other one?’
‘They’re trained for this type of work. They’ll stay out of the way, head west.’
‘But we can’t just-’
‘We have to,’ interrupted Gibson. ‘I don’t like it any more than you, but that’s the situation and your safety is paramount.’
Farrell, scanning the surveillance monitors, interrupted them. ‘All clear outside. We’re good to go.’
Gibson flicked off the lights in the room. He opened the heavy steel door, inviting a mild breeze that swirled around the room as their eyes adjusted to the dark undergrowth of Kensington Gardens.
‘Let’s go,’ he whispered. They filed out of the blockhouse, taking up position a few yards into the trees.
‘Which way are we headed?’ hissed Harry as Gibson scanned the dark, open spaces that sloped down towards Kensington High Street.
Gibson smiled in the darkness. ‘We’re going shopping. Let’s move.’
The party broke cover, Harry scampering after the dark shape ahead of him. Shopping? What the bloody hell did he mean? But Harry decided not to dwell too much on the soldier’s cryptic reply. He knew all his questions would be answered soon enough. Instead, he concentrated on keeping Gibson in sight as they headed south across Kensington Gardens.
As they moved through the shadows, the first chirping notes began to echo around the park, the birds in the surrounding trees heralding the fast approaching dawn.
On the roof of Barkers department store on Kensington High Street, Flight Lieutenant Gavin Lucas sat in silence in the cockpit of his Boeing-Sikorsky Dark Eagle stealth helicopter and waited patiently for his passengers. It had been a long wait, almost three hours now, and they still hadn’t arrived, but the trip into Central London had been worth it purely for reconnaissance value, and his multi-million dollar helicopter was just the bird for the job.
The Dark Eagle was an intelligence-gathering platform like no other. Its on-board flight systems were state-of-the-art and incorporated the latest advances in stealth technology. Its four-bladed rotor, always a detectable heat source on other helicopters, was cooled by a sealed liquid nitrogen system and the rotors spun on a revolutionary bearing arrangement, creating a magnetic field around the blade hub that literally sucked in sound waves. It made the Dark Eagle almost silent.
As a weapons platform, it boasted twin twenty-millimetre electric cannons and two rocket pods, each holding thirty mini-rockets. The angular nose, shaped to deflect airborne and ground radar, bristled with thermal, night-vision and low-light optical equipment as well as sideways look-down, telescopic and digital cameras that could track an object on the ground or in the air for 360 degrees. Its air-search radar and target-tracking systems were second to none and its own radar signature was equivalent to that of a large bird. The Dark Eagle was American-b
uilt, of course, but the British Army had six on loan and Lucas was one of the lucky ones who got to fly this impressive machine.
Waiting in the silence of the cockpit, he reflected on the flight to London from Alternate One. As the aircraft glided low and fast across the dark English countryside, its on-board systems had recorded the huge columns of tanks and infantry moving up the M3 and A3 motorways towards London, confirming that England was well and truly in the grip of a massive invasion. As the Dark Eagle gathered data from all points of the compass, it was beamed back to Alternate One by a series of encrypted microwave burst signals that took less than a tenth of a second to transmit. Deep under the Mendip Hills, analysts were already crunching the volumes of data Dark Eagle was recording on its perilous journey into the capital.
Things had got pretty hairy when they reached London itself. Here, there were many more troops on the ground and someone in the Acton area of West London must have got a brief radar return, firing a surface-to-air missile in their general direction. There had been a few tense moments inside the aircraft, but the missile hadn’t achieved lock and had crashed to the ground somewhere to the northwest. Thankfully for the Dark Eagle, the rest of the journey remained uneventful and they landed quietly on the roof of the famous art deco building on Kensington High Street. Lucas had ordered all systems shut down and there they’d remained, an indistinct black mass on a dark rooftop.
His two crew members, one co-pilot and a Flight Sergeant, had taken up positions away from the aircraft. The co-pilot was on the roof itself, patrolling the perimeter of the building and watching the street below. The Flight Sergeant had made his way down the darkened fire escape to the staff entrance in Young Street. There he waited, deep in the shadows, until their ‘package’ arrived. Lucas didn’t know who the package was, but he presumed it was a senior member of the Cabinet or high-ranking military officer. He hadn’t been told, for operational reasons of course, but it was a fair bet they wouldn’t risk the Dark Eagle and its crew for the Secretary for Sport and Culture.
