Invasion (21 page)

‘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.

‘I believe
it’s this man, General.’

Mousa studied the picture on the card and compared it to the face lying at his feet. ‘David Fuller, Director of Communications
.
Have the body removed but kept separate from other casualties.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Mousa returned to the Cabinet room, already a hive of activity. Cables snaked their way around the floor and electronic data flowed across several screens that had been quickly set up by their operators, who now sat around the Cabinet table, headphones clamped to their ears as they digested the information on the monitors before them.

‘Status report, Major Karroubi.’

A short but very broad-shouldered Major limped heavily across the room.
‘Voice communications are up and running. Battlefield command
system is on-line and we are active on the divisional network. We’ve uploaded our initial mission report and status. We have received verification from General Al-Bitruji and from High Command. Both await our next update.’

‘Our troops?’

‘Whitehall
is sealed at both ends and we are about to send in the assault teams to clear and secure the various buildings along Whitehall. The Treasury building and Foreign Office are both on fire and have sustained heavy damage. The Ministry of Defence across the street will be dealt with last. Our spotters report movement on several floors there. I thought it prudent to secure the rest of Whitehall before sending in a probing team.’

‘Good. The surrounding area?’

‘I have ordered four teams of recce troops to observe and report anything in the vicinity of our location. Our sleeper teams have successfully quashed all local threats and we have taken many prisoners.’

‘Reinforcements?’

‘Travelling
towards London as
we speak. The security battalion assigned to Whitehall should arrive within two to three hours. Reports indicate that resistance has been light across the country.’

‘Allah preserve us, that was close!’

Both General Al-Bitruji and Colonel Farad brushed the dirt off their clothes as
they surveyed the burning wreckage of their command vehicle from the relative safety of a drainage ditch beside the M3 motorway.

The
British Apache attack helicopter had appeared from nowhere and managed to loose off a couple of missiles before anyone had had a chance to react. Their driver had swerved to avoid the armoured vehicle in front of them, which had taken a direct hit, but they’d clipped the rear of the burning vehicle and spun to the left, crashing into another vehicle travelling parallel to them. The second missile screamed out of the darkness and roared over their heads, hitting a troop truck and sending it spinning into the air. Instinctively, their driver had slammed on the brakes. Behind them, scores of other military vehicles began to swerve and brake to avoid the carnage ahead.

Al-Bitruji had seen the danger and grabbed Colonel Farad by the collar, dragging him out of the rear door before his subordinate knew what was happening. They made it to the ditch, just in time to see a white-hot stream of twenty-millimetre explosive rounds cut
through
the
armoured skin of
their command vehicle. Several rounds found the fuel tank and the resulting explosion destroyed another two vehicles and several more personnel. The rounds continued to chew up the column of vehicles and then stopped abruptly.

Al-Bitruji saw the dark silhouette of the attack helicopter as
it hovered above the road two hundred metres ahead of them. It swivelled under its rotor blades and banked away, roaring up a wide
firebreak
cut amongst a forest of pine trees that flanked the motorway. A single SAM missile flew wildly above the trees in its wake.

‘What the devil happened?’
asked Farad as both men scrambled back onto the road.

‘Panic. That’s what happened. This
is the first time many of our troops have been under fire,’ replied Al-Bitruji, trying hard to control the tremor in his own voice.

‘The Infidel could have inflicted far more damage than he did. Why did he break off the attack?’

The General had been asking himself the same question. Their massive convoy had started off well but, as the distance to London dwindled, so the vehicles had begun to bunch up. It must have been a target-rich environment for the Apache pilot. He could have fired more missiles or used his cannon to far greater effect, but he’d broken off the attack and made good his escape. Maybe it wasn’t an organised ambush. Maybe the helicopter had run into the convoy by chance. Maybe he was low on fuel or ordinance. And maybe he would be back.

‘Never mind, we need to get the convoy moving again. And where the devil are our own helicopters?’

‘Still being assembled in Southampton,’ Farad explained. ‘It seems that there has been a problem with the rotor couplings on the first batch that has kept them grounded. They should be in the air within two hours.’

‘Always the details,’ Al-Bitruji muttered under his breath. ‘Get onto the Air Force,’ he barked. ‘Tell them we require air cover for this convoy. We may not be so lucky next time.’

‘Yes, General.’

Al-Bitruji
was pleased to see that vehicles were already on the move. Men waving fluorescent traffic-control
wands were diverting the long column of vehicles around the wreckage, whilst other teams tackled the fires and cleared bodies from the road. A heavily-armed Humvee pulled up alongside them and both officers climbed aboard. Al-Bitruji turned to his second-in-command.

‘Have the gap between each vehicle increased to a hundred metres. Every fifth vehicle will carry two troopers with portable SAMs, and vehicles are to travel in groups of no more than ten. Everyone
is to observe strict light discipline. We can’t afford to lose more men or equipment.’

Farad grabbed a radio headset and began to issue orders while the General contemplated his next move. He had his own orders to carry out. He studied the command console for a moment. So, Mousa was in Downing Street already. No doubt the arrogant bastard would gloat when they saw each other again. Al-Bitruji was no admirer of his fellow General and thought the paratrooper a pompous ass. But he was close to the Holy One, a position that Al-Bitruji himself would have given anything to be in. Still, maybe the tide would turn in Al-Bitruji’s favour.

There was no mention of resistance. The General smiled at the thought of Mousa desperately fighting for his life in a rubble-strewn Whitehall. If he failed – if he was killed, or captured – then what? The Holy One would’ve lost his golden child, eventually seeking the counsel of another perhaps, someone who had proved his loyalty, who waited patiently in the wings to serve at the Cleric’s right hand. Someone who might discover Mousa’s bullet-ridden body in Whitehall or save the arrogant bastard’s skin with his own troops. Either way, he had to get to London quickly.

The General slapped the driver on the shoulder and the Humvee lurched forward, racing towards the head of the convoy.

‘Any news on Beecham?’ demanded
General Mousa.

He was holding conference with his senior staff in the Cabinet Room while around the walls, heavily-armed
troops stood sentinel and the air crackled with continuous radio chatter.

Major Karroubi studied his notes. ‘Our intelligence puts him inside Number Ten at
eighteen hundred
hours. We’ve found the bodies of dozens of high-value casualties both in this building and the surrounding area, but not Beecham. There are additional remains that have yet to be identified, but due to their condition it’s likely they were victims of the truck bomb. There’s blood on the floor of Beecham’s private apartment and footprints in the dust up there.’

‘He’s still alive,’ muttered Mousa.

‘It looks likely,’ agreed Karroubi. ‘Someone must have carried Fuller’s body to the garden and more footprints down here indicate that several people have been moving around the lower levels after the explosion.’

‘Which means there’s another way out,’ reasoned Mousa.

‘As you know, the access tunnel below us leads to the Ministry of Defence building across the street. It’s highly likely the Prime Minister has fled there. Our assault troops are in place, ready to storm the building.’

Mousa thought about the opportunity that had presented itself. A captured Prime Minister, paraded before the cameras, urging his fellow citizens not to resist, surrendering
the country to a victorious General Mousa. ‘Give the order to advance, Major. And I want Beecham found. Alive.’

‘Yes, General.’

The shooting had finally died down. It had been some time since Khan had heard any gunfire outside and what little he could hear sounded like it was some distance away. But as he waited for darkness to fall, Khan heard other sounds too. Harsh, urgent voices close by, shouting in both English and Arabic, although it was difficult to tell what was being said. He’d heard screaming too, ear-splitting screams of anguish that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Later, a car had approached at high speed, its engine roaring and its tyres screeching in protest. Then, an almighty bang followed by a deathly silence.

At one point, Khan had scrambled to his feet as several
people ran past outside, their shadows flitting across the walls and their footsteps pounding the pavement. The metal shutters crashed and rippled
as a body cannoned off them. Khan stood frozen, heart hammering, the rifle clasped tightly in his shaking hands, but the commotion had quickly passed and he’d
slumped back down against the wall. For the last hour the only sounds he’d
heard were the fires crackling and spitting outside in the street.

Now the shadows had lengthened and Khan moved carefully towards the shutters, peering between the metal slats. There were scores of burning vehicles out there, most of them now blackened shells. The smoke was still thick, hanging in low clouds that drifted across the darkening streets. He saw the surveillance vehicle about twenty yards away, the windscreen peppered with bullet holes but still relatively intact. He could also see Spencer’s legs splayed out in the rear of the vehicle and Max was still in there too. The fact that he had to leave them there made Khan feel nauseous.

He moved away from the shutters and back into the shadows. He wondered how far this chaos had spread. Was it confined to a few square miles in South London or was it part of a larger, more well-planned operation? He ran his mind back over the events of… this morning? So much had happened since then that it seemed like another time and place. Without doubt, Khan was caught in the middle of a major terrorist attack. But how far had it spread and where were the police cordons? Well, if anywhere, they’d be towards the bridge at Vauxhall.

He doubted that the SIS building at Vauxhall Cross had been hit. In the event of any major incident, dedicated police units would be on standby to secure the whole area, effectively sealing off Vauxhall Cross itself from vehicular and pedestrian traffic. In addition to that, the building had its own formidable defences, including bombproof gates, reinforced concrete walls and steel window shutters over bulletproof
Plexiglas
on every floor. Yeah, Vauxhall Cross, Khan decided. That’s where the police cordons will be.

He headed back through the shop towards the rear of the building. He threw the bolt on the rear gate and found himself in a darkened back street tucked behind the Wandsworth Road. The street was empty, the sky glowing red above the
rooftops
to the east. He made his way towards Vauxhall, keeping to the shadows. The houses on his left soon gave way to a chain link fence and Khan quickly realised he was looking at the darkened sprawl of New Covent Garden market. It was a massive warehouse complex, certainly one that had seen better days, but the seemingly deserted site boasted a multitude of loading bays with towers of wooden pallets stacked every few yards under the dark shadows of wide, overhead canopies. It was the perfect place to get off the streets and close the distance to Vauxhall Cross.

He scaled the fence and headed across the empty market towards Nine Elms Lane, a wide commuter road that ran east along the Thames towards Vauxhall Cross. Maybe there was a police roadblock there. He was more cautious now as he left the cover of the market complex, ducking under the vehicle entrance barrier and heading towards the main road. What he saw momentarily
stopped him in his tracks. In the darkness, Nine Elms Lane was a graveyard of vehicles. Some displayed signs of collision damage, while others looked surprisingly intact. Most had their doors open, an indication of a panicked exit. The abandoned vehicles stretched far into the distance where, above the roofs of the residential buildings at Vauxhall Cross, a huge fire consumed everything and set the night sky ablaze.

Khan’s
head spun in shock. Everything he’d
gone through tonight had convinced him that he was involved in a major terrorist operation of a scale never seen before. But he’d been mistaken. It wasn’t just confined to a small area. He spun slowly around and, for the first time, Khan noticed that the sky around the horizon glowed red from a multitude of fires, a scene made more noticeable by the fact that the whole city was blanketed in darkness. The sky, usually so busy with the dull roar of jet engines, was eerily quiet. He didn’t see a single aircraft.

Khan looked up and down the road. Where were all the people, the countless emergency
service vehicles that should be swamping the area? Events
like this usually brought the curious and the troublesome out onto the streets, but Khan didn’t see a single person. It was
as if everyone had disappeared. He sat down behind a low wall, his legs feeling suddenly weak. A massive intelligence failure, of that there was no doubt. Of course, the Intelligence Services had their surveillance operations, such as the one in the Morden Mosque, but who could have imagined it would lead to this? They hadn’t had a single sniff of an attack. Why not? An operation of this magnitude should have surely turned up the odd whisper. But no, nothing. Khan didn’t bother to speculate who might be behind it.

It was Arabia, of course. This kind of op called for meticulous preparation and timing. The
power cuts, the weapons, the lack of any co-coordinated
response – an operation planned at the highest level requiring the best minds and an intelligence network of the highest calibre. Who else but Arabia would have the means and the motive? We should have seen it coming, realised Khan. Old hatreds died hard, especially religious ones. His gut instincts were right all along.

He got to his feet. As he did so, a sudden movement caught his eye. A short distance away, a large DIY warehouse
squatted across several acres of land alongside New Covent Garden. Khan saw scores of pale faces staring
back at him from behind the glass of the main doors, melting back into the shadows when they caught sight of the automatic weapon in Khan’s hands.

He inspected the area more carefully. There were dozens of cars and vans in the forecourt and he saw movement inside some of them too, just a glimpse of a head or glow of a cigarette. Civilians; caught out in the chaos, too scared to move, waiting for help that might never come. By their movements and their sudden withdrawal from view he guessed he’d been marked down as a bad guy. This identification
business was going to be a problem, Khan realised. Sooner or later someone would mistake him for a terrorist. Then again, if he acquired some kind of official uniform, something that people would recognise
as being friendly, then the bad guys would see him as a target and he’d be in more trouble. So, what to do?

Going east towards Vauxhall Cross was
clearly out of the question. He needed to get to Millbank, where his MI5 colleagues would be working the crisis behind the deceptively secure walls of Thames House. He needed to report the deaths of his colleagues, to recover their bodies, be part of a team again. But first he had to get out of the area and across the river.

North then, via Chelsea Bridge. But what lay in wait for him on the way? He could see the glow of fires in all directions, a sign that danger lurked at all points of the compass. It could be even worse over the river, but that’s where the professional organisations were – Scotland Yard, Whitehall, the MOD. Right now they would be co-coordinating some kind of response, deploying their forces, executing well-prepared
emergency plans and rescue efforts. As he moved towards the bridge, an idea suddenly came to him. If he needed to recce his route across the river, what better place than one of the best viewing platforms in
west
London: Park Heights Tower.

The Park Heights complex was the result of a huge regeneration project that had transformed the crumbling site of Battersea Power Station into a twenty-first century development. It had everything: shopping
malls, conference
suites, hotels, cinemas, plush apartment blocks and even a marina. But it was the tower that Khan was most interested in. Park Heights was a thirty-storey, circular glass and steel structure that rose up from the middle of the power station floor, creating a fifth tower that stood over four hundred feet high, dominating the
four original chimney stacks. It would be a long climb but it would be worth it. From up there he would be able to see the extent of the attacks and how far the power cuts had spread. It would also give him a good indicator of where he could find help.

The complex was deserted when he arrived. There were several abandoned cars on the access ramp that led to the mezzanine level, but thankfully no bodies. At the top of the ramp was an abandoned security station, its red and white striped barrier blocking vehicular access to the upper level. Khan ducked under the barrier and headed towards a set of large glass doors.

Inside, he found himself on a wide walkway, fifty feet above the deserted mall floor below. He turned his gaze upwards and saw the tower looming above him in the darkness. Khan had seen it many times from a distance, but up close and blacked out it took on a foreboding quality that made him apprehensive. He pushed on regardless. The reception area was empty and undamaged and Khan moved quickly to the fire escape, finding himself inside a smooth-walled concrete tube with a circular steel staircase that wound up into the darkness above. It was going to be a long climb.

He doubled back to the reception area and rummaged beneath the security desk until he found a torch, slipping it into his pocket. Back inside the fire escape he began to climb. By the tenth floor Khan’s body confirmed that he was badly out of shape. By floor twenty-two, he had to stop for a five-minute break while his lungs gasped for air and his heart hammered loudly in his chest. Thirty minutes later, an exhausted Khan finally reached the elevator maintenance and electrical storerooms on the thirty-second floor.

The sign on the door at the top of the stairs warned of high winds and safety lines. Khan unbolted it and pushed it open, finding himself on a circular gantry at the very top of the building. The wind whipped his hair and clothes and Khan’s hands gripped the rail tightly. But it wasn’t the height that bothered him
– it was the vision of hell around him that made his tired legs weaken further.

London was completely blacked out. For as far
as he could see, the city was blanketed in darkness, punctuated by the glow of fires dotted around the horizon. He steadied himself and shuffled further around the gantry, his hands gripping the thick steel rail. He concentrated on the east, towards Vauxhall Cross and Whitehall, where dozens of buildings were on fire, the flames dancing and leaping into the air, bathing the sky above in a red glow.

He moved further around the gantry and looked north across the Thames. Directly over the river, Khan could see another large fire had engulfed several waterfront buildings and, further west, there were other conflagrations, their flames climbing into the night sky. Fear suddenly gripped him. This was like something from a nightmare. No lights, no communications, no signs of order,
no rescue services; only chaos. And if the seat of power in London could be disabled and plunged into such chaos, what about the rest of the country?

He heard shots below him. From his lofty vantage point, they sounded more like hollow pops drifting up on the night air, but Khan wasn’t fooled. He made his way around the gantry until he overlooked the dark spread of Battersea Park and Chelsea Bridge Road. Below him, Khan saw the bridge itself had been blocked by cars, with armed men standing behind the makeshift barrier. Despite the distance it was clear they weren’t police or army. As he watched, two
flatbed
trucks, their headlights piercing the darkness, peeled away from the bridge and headed towards the complex. He could see men clinging to the backs of the trucks, armed men, swaying in unison
as the vehicles turned into the access road that led to the mall below him. He headed for the staircase
as fast as he could.