Armageddon?? (35 page)

Stevenson
whooped with laughter and hook her head. “Don’t it always go to show? Them that
talks the talk don’t walk the walk. Right Jim, we better give the others a
chance to stretch.

She’d
timed it just right. By the time her crew had got their break, the big Oshkosh
ships of the desert had arrived and were driving into the laager. Critically,
all the fuel trucks were there, their load of fuel was desperately needed. She
watched carefully as the hoses were unreeled and the fuel trucks started
gassing up the Abrams and Bradleys. Other trucks were unloading boxes of
ammunition.

“Hey
Ell-tee. You need reloads?”

“Sure
do.” She looked at the barrel of her tank. They’d stopped using a single ring
for each baldrick kill, now they had a one-inch band for 10 and a quarter inch
band for singles. Plus their single white band as well.

“Right,
can give you ten Sabot, twenty HEAT, the rest canister.”

“I’d
like more canister if you’ve got it. Not much use for sabot.”

“Sorry
Ell-tee, we’re running low. We’re sharing out the HEAT and canister and making the
numbers up with sabot. The brass tell us they’re flying 120 in direct from home
and more’s coming from Europe but we’re still running low here where it
counts.”

“Hokay.”
Slightly resigned but there it was. Nobody said war had to be easy. Stevenson
and her crew started breaking open the crates and bombing up their tank.

They
were interrupted by the sound of a Blackhawk landing.

“Captain
Stevenson?”

She
turned around, slightly irritated. She assumed the mistaken rank was a comment
on her dress, she was wearing a tank top and had left the top of her BDUs in
the tank. The desert may be grand but it was still hot.

“Its
Lieutenant, Err Sorry Sir, I’ll get my blouse right now.” She did a double
take. Colonel Sean MacFarland was standing in front of her.

“Well,
when you do, you can get to pin these on it.” He handed her a small box,
containing double silver bars. “Congratulations. You’ve done a fine job out
here.”

“Sir,
thank you Sir.” Stevenson looked at the bars in her hand.

“You’ll
take over this combat group. You done good Stevenson, especially for somebody
thrown in the deep end the way you were. The whole group will be staying here
tonight, the way the pocket is shrinking around what’s left of the baldricks,
there’s too much danger of friendly fire if we don’t take things carefully.”

“Big
jump up Sir.” Stevenson was nervous, what amounted to a company command was a
challenge to put it mildly.

“Same
for everybody Stevenson. Army’s growing fast, we’re taking cadre out of units
to help train new outfits as fast as we can. You stay alive, you’ll have a
battalion in a few months. Well done Captain.”

MacFarland
wandered off, apparently at random but to those under him, it always seemed
that he would turn up an exactly the time needed to spot a problem developing.
Around the laagered combat team, the dusk started to settle and the flashes of
artillery fire grew more distinct.

Somewhere
In The Desert, Western Iraq, night

Abigor
huddled in the rocks, looking out across the desert. If his instincts were right,
the hellmouth was very close. The last few days had been a horror, the human
sky-chariots had hounded his force as it had disintegrated. They’d never let
up, their curious rotating wings beating the air, the thumping of their weapons
always so deadly. His Army had started retreating, what was left of it, then
the retreat had become a rout. Still the humans hadn’t let up, they’d pursued
him until the rout had become a panic stricken flight for the rear and the
defeated army had become a helpless mob that had been slashed into ever-smaller
pieces. Then, when he thought he had finally escaped, he’d seen more of the
human iron chariots in front of them, blocking the retreat.

That
was when he had understood at last. The humans didn’t fight their battles to make
a point, they fought them to destroy their enemies. He’d noted something else.
In Hell, armies fought their battles bottom-up. The foot infantry would get
killed but rarely any of higher rank. Commanders had better things to do that
kill each other. Anyway, how could one negotiate a deal with somebody one had
just killed? But the humans fought their battles top-down. They started by
killing the enemy commanders and then slaughtered the decapitated mass that was
left. There was a corollary to that, they fought that way because they didn’t
intend to negotiate with the losers.

How
could they have understood humans so little?

Abigor
shook himself, and cautiously looked around. The humans could see in the dark,
shots could come out of nowhere. Still, it looked safe enough and there wasn’t
far to go. The hellmouth was so close now, just a few more hours away.

Chapter
Twenty Six

Central
Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Inspector
Richard Doherty was a veteran police officer, having been in the Police Service
of Northern Ireland, or Police Service of Northern Ireland (incorporating the
Royal Ulster Constabulary, George Cross) to give it its full name, since 2001
and had served in the Royal Ulster Constabulary for twelve years before the
change of name. He was one of the 20 percent of the service’s officers who were
Catholic (well, ex-Catholic and it was about 15 percent since The Message),
though as a veteran RUC man he thought of him as an eight percenter, 8.3
percent of the old force having been Catholic. The Message had hit Northern
Ireland harder than the Mainland; around a quarter of the population had just
lain down and died, or committed suicide, including many of the Province’s
religious leaders and some of the political ones. Sadly for the police about
ten percent of the service had been amongst those who had died.

Like
many of his co-religionists he represented the fact that Catholics had been
promoted in numbers well out of proportion to the percentage of total officers.
He still remembered the days when becoming a police officer, or soldier, was a
very dangerous choice for a Catholic. Not only were you likely to be shot in
the back, or blown up while carrying out your duties, but your family was also
at great risk. Only now, times had changed.

The
appearance of the armies of Hell in the desert of Iraq and a baldrick attack in
America had really stepped up the level anxiety for the public. To reassure the
population, the PSNI had put a strong armed presence on the streets of the
Province. Backing them up were a couple of regular army infantry battalions,
who would soon be joined by the recently re-formed Home Service battalions of
The Royal Irish Regiment. Men and women (known as ‘Greenfinches’) who had
served in these battalions had flocked back to the colors when the decision to
re-form them had been announced. Fortunately the army still had enough
equipment and uniforms in storage in Northern Ireland to equip them.

The
Inspector was in charge of a Police Support Unit of twelve officers, mounted in
a pair of armored Land Rovers, known as the Tangi. Once upon a time the Tangis
of the RUC had been painted grey, now they were painted in the same orange and
yellow checkered ‘Battenberg’ high visibility scheme worn by similar vehicles
on the Mainland

Doherty
shook his head as he saw a man and a woman, both carrying Armalite rifles,
walked past as they did their shopping. One of the first acts after the British
Government had declared a State of Emergency was to repeal all existing gun
control laws. Illegally held weapons were now appearing openly on the streets.
It was quite amazing how many of them there were. But then, the various groups
of Irish terrorists had been notorious for burying stashes of guns all over the
countryside.

“Few
years ago we would have been arresting that pair, or worse, Sarge.” Doherty
commented.

“That’s
right, to be sure.” Sergeant Chris Ryder replied. “I don’t think I’ll ever get
use to seeing ex-Provos or Loyalists walking about with their guns openly.”

“Yeh,
I know what you mean, Sarge. If I had my way half of them would still be in the
Maze; murderous bastards the lot of them. Those rifles won’t do them much good
anyway; I hear that a full thirty round magazine of 5.56mm rounds only slows a
baldrick down.”

Doherty
had every reason to be bitter about the terrorists. One of his friends had been
shot in the back by an IRA gunman while administering First Aid to a woman
injured in a road accident, while another had been crippled by a blast bomb
thrown by a Loyalist mob.

Suddenly
a series of loud screams caught the attention of both officers. Doherty and
Ryder turned towards the sound, just catching the sound of two ‘pops’, pistol
shots. They were just in time to see one of the police support unit personnel,
Glock 17 still in his hands, being eviscerated by a three meter high demonic
apparition.

“Jesus…I
mean bloody hell! ….. I mean, oh shit!” Doherty exclaimed as he watched the
baldrick kill a civilian who was too slow in running. His mind seemed to be
running in slow motion and he had time to reflect that The Message had
eviscerated the English language’s stock of forceful expressions.

“Get
the rifles out of the Tangis!” He yelled to the remainder of the unit, then
“RUN! RUN!” to the nearest civilians.

Doherty
and Ryder both drew their pistols and opened fire, even though they knew that
the 9x19mm rounds would probably do little more than piss the baldrick off. The
baldrick turned as he felt the new stinging impacts, he turned and saw two more
of the humans dressed in green and wearing those funny hats pointing their
outstretched arms at him, as if praying, or begging for mercy. He marveled at
their apparent stupidity, praying had not saved the last green clad human.

The
two police officers retreated towards the Tangis, changing the magazines in
their pistols. Several other members of the unit had also opened fire, but to
Doherty’s horror he could see that although the baldrick was bleeding from
multiple wounds it had not even been slowed down. All he could do was continue
to fire until he ran out of ammunition, and hope for the best.

At
this point an armed civilian joined the battle, engaging the baldrick with an
AK-47, the demon paused, ignoring the police officers for a moment to take hold
of the civilian, tear out his heart and throw him through the air.

Finally
the two officers assigned to the task managed to get the six HK33 rifles that
were held in lock boxes in each Land Rover and threw them out. Doherty dropped
his Glock and grabbed the rifle from the police woman with a great deal of
gratitude. He had no hesitation in selecting full auto, raised the rifle to his
shoulder and opened fire. Now that the surviving officers were armed with rifles,
even ones firing 5.56x45mm NATO rounds, the baldrick finally began to show that
it was feeling the effects of the gunfire. It began to stagger back under the
effect of the massed gunfire, especially now that several armed civilians had
joined the fight. Two of them had pump-action shotguns and the heavy slugs
produced the first real impacts on the creature.

They
drove it back, the bullets pounding on its body. Finally it collapsed to the
street, dead. Doherty and Ryder advanced on the body cautiously, changing the
magazines on their rifles. To their relief it was very dead.

“Score
one for the good guys.” One of the armed civilians was loading his shotgun with
more heavy slugs. He looked sadly at the street where a police officer and two
civilians were down, in crumpled, lifeless heaps. “Cost us though.” Then he
grinned at the police officers. “Still, its good to see true fighting Irishmen
all on the same side at last.”

Cabinet
Office, White House, Washington D.C.

“We
must anticipate that there will be further attacks of this kind. In view of
what that monster told us…” Secretary Warner was interrupted by a tangible
shudder that ran around the room. Memories of the succubus’s presence at a
meeting were all to fresh. “these attacks have been going on for a long time
and we see no reason why they should stop now. In fact, with the destruction of
the baldrick army in Iraq, they might well pick up in tempo. So, as a line of
defense against such attacks, I propose the formation of a local defense force that
will protect areas where there are large gatherings of people. Malls, sports
meetings etc. The personnel will be drawn from all citizens between the ages of
18 and 50 who are not currently serving in the armed forces. Obviously, we’ll
give priority to people whose industries are not needed for the war effort,
they can serve one of their work days. We’ll arm them with the new .458 rifles
we’re putting into production. I propose the new force be called the Local
Defense Volunteers.”

“Local
Defense Volunteers.” Secretary Rice’s voice was thoughtful. “LDV. You know what
they’ll be called don’t you? The Look, Duck and Vanish.”

“Look,
Duck and Vanish?” Warner thought for a second. “I suppose so. How did you come
up with that?”

“The
British had a similar force back in World War Two. Originally they called it
the Local Defense Volunteers but they changed it to ‘Home Guard’ because of the
misinterpretation of the acronym.”