Invasion (31 page)

General Mousa leaned against his Humvee and surveyed the wreckage left in the wake of the Dark Eagle’s assault. As he watched, numerous vehicle fires were being noisily extinguished and the blackened and dismembered bodies of the casualties removed in rubber body bags. After a while, all that was left were four burnt-out vehicle skeletons and a slick of oil and melted tarmac across the width of Kensington High Street.

Mousa’s
calm exterior belied his inner turmoil. Cursed
Infidels, he raged silently. Curse them and the day their whore mothers gave birth to them. How did they slip through? And escape in a helicopter, no less. He would have to communicate with the Holy One soon. Back home it would be after sunrise, and a personal situation report was overdue. He would break the bad news in due course but, before he did so, there was still a straw to be grasped.

Major Karroubi was limping amongst the debris. Mousa beckoned him and he limped over to the Humvee.

‘I believe there is a witness to this shambles. Summon him.’

Karroubi barked an order and an Arabian survivor of the rocket attack trotted over. Mousa noticed the soldier was unharmed
but terrified. He stepped forward and bowed deeply.

‘What did you see? Quickly,’ demanded Mousa.

The soldier began to recount his recent near-death experience, telling Mousa of the warm breeze that ruffled his clothing, the black shape silhouetted against the deep blue of the pre-dawn sky. As the missiles were launched and the bullet casings rained down around him, he flung himself to the ground, reluctant to move for fear of being caught in the carnage. When he looked up again, it was just in time to see the helicopter disappear back over the roof of the building across the street. He’d joined in the chase of the English soldiers, following two angry comrades down a side street and into a large department store. The grenades had killed them both. Mousa dismissed the relieved soldier with a wave of his hand.

‘They’re headed west,’ declared Mousa. ‘Ground all aircraft west of the city and divert any flights inbound for Heathrow. As of now, the whole of western England is
a no-fly zone unless specifically
authorised by me. And tell Air Command that I want a Big Eye in the air immediately.’

‘At once, General.’

Mousa produced a map and spread it out across the bonnet of the jeep.

‘Have a company of airborne troops loaded onto helicopters at Heathrow and ready to move on my order. I want them headed west as soon as the enemy
aircraft
is located. Tell Al-Bitruji to contact our forces at Southampton docks. I want the next fully-equipped mechanized battalion diverted from the coast and have the commander of that unit report to me directly when they have reached this point here.’ Mousa stabbed a thick finger on the map.

‘But that’s
Salisbury,’ cautioned Karroubi.
‘If we send units west, before we’ve cleared the Hampshire gap, they could be engaged from the rear by British forces escaping the garrisons at Tidworth and Aldershot. Forgive me for saying so, General, but these redeployments run contrary to the invasion plans.’

Mousa quickly folded the map and shoved it into the pocket of his combat trousers. ‘And like all battle plans, they tend to change
as soon as the first shot is fired.’

‘But the Holy One-’

‘Let me worry about that,’ snapped Mousa. ‘Just get the forces to Salisbury and inform me when they’re in position.’

They climbed aboard the Humvee and the driver swung the vehicle around, accelerating east towards Knightsbridge. Ahead of them, the sky had taken on a pale hue as the first rays of sun breached the horizon.

Mousa settled back in his seat and considered his impending report to the Cleric. His Holiness would not be pleased, but the General hoped he could rectify the situation by capturing the Prime Minister before the day’s end.

The Big Eye surveillance aircraft rotated off the runway at Heathrow and climbed into the dawn sky, headed due west. The flight crew had been in-country for less than two hours when the call came to scramble, but luckily the Big Eye’s specialist support team had flown ahead with their equipment and turned the plane around as soon as it landed on English soil.

Captain Ibrahim Al-Sadir pushed the throttles to their stops and gained altitude quickly. Their pre-flight mission briefing had been urgent and to the point: find a helicopter, probably of a stealth variety, headed west. Identify, track and report in. Simple. Except to find a tiny helicopter cloaked with stealth technology and hugging the ground was going to be difficult, even for the formidable electronic capabilities of the Big Eye.

Al-Sadir flexed his fingers
inside his flying gloves. He’d
expected to fly operations like this, but not quite so soon. The military push to the north and west of England was supposed to start after the major cities had been secured and before the enemy had a chance to muster their remaining forces; H-Hour plus seventy-two, according to the crew briefings back in Arabia. Something must have gone wrong. The helicopter they hunted was important, so important that there were other forces out there intent on its capture. Must be something big, thought Al-Sadir. Still, it was not his concern. As he levelled out at seven thousand metres, the young captain pondered the tactical advantages of his situation.

Firstly, domestic electricity supplies were still cut off, which meant electronic background noise would be minimal. The reasonably flat landscape was spread out before him under a cloudless sky as the sun rose behind the aircraft, making visibility almost perfect.

Secondly, all Arabian
aircraft to the west of Heathrow had been stood down, de-cluttering the electronic picture even further and thus aiding the Big Eye in its search. Although it would only take seconds for his on-board computer systems to register friend or foe, that little processing chore had been alleviated by the lack of friendly air activity ahead of him. In fact, his systems registered zero activity on a westerly heading between his aircraft and as far as the Bristol Channel. Perfect. As an experienced pilot, Al-Sadir often had to cope with crowded airspaces, but right now he was the only aircraft in the sky and the thought pleased him greatly.

Thirdly, the
absence of enemy ground
radar gave Al-Sadir additional confidence. According to early reports, the British armed forces had been dealt a massive blow and had been all but neutralised by the invasion forces. Not a single
co-coordinated counter-attack had materialised anywhere around the country. Of course, there had been minor skirmishes, but nothing that indicated organised and determined resistance. And the Royal Air Force, once a formidable foe, had been thoroughly neutered by the economic crisis that had plagued Europe for years. What few reports of enemy air activity they’d received indicated they were operating far to the north. It was just his aircraft and a cloudless sky. If there was a helicopter out there, he would find it. He checked the Big Eye’s position then keyed the interior comms system.

‘Confirm target area. Commence sweep.’

Behind him, in the highly sophisticated main control cabin, the Big Eye’s crew of eight technicians finished calibrating their instruments and activated numerous air and ground-search radars, some of the
most technologically advanced
systems in the world. Outside the aircraft, the air became ‘hot’ with microwaves
as multi-layered search systems
swept
the airspace
before them. The computers and instrumentation aboard were especially designed to filter information from the multiple radar returns and sort them into categories.

Almost immediately they received several contacts. The system identified them as
either flocks of birds or similar anomalies, but the computers
were programmed to ignore these potential targets and the sweep
continued. The returns whittled down on the scopes. Now the remaining targets were classified as military, enemy vehicles and armour on the ground. These returns were plotted and the information sent back to the controllers at Heathrow. They would be dealt with presently.

The target that the Big Eye hunted possessed a specific electronic signature. Speed was also a factor and the computers
had been programmed to ignore anything under one hundred and forty kilometres per hour. On its fifth sweep, the air-search system reported a single contact moving at nearly two hundred kilometres per hour, one hundred and seventeen kilometres ahead. The return wasn’t strong and the blip kept fading from the display, but it was a positive return and the speed, altitude, direction and lack of transponder signal were enough to confirm to the operator that the target was unfriendly.

‘Target acquired. Possible helicopter.’

In the cockpit, Al-Sadir listened to the report and checked his own display, watching the tell-tale blip fade in and out intermittently. It certainly behaved like a stealth aircraft. He banked the Big Eye over a few degrees and increased power, still heading due west. Another radar sweep and the contact firmed up. An enemy helicopter, type unknown and employing stealth technology. And it was where he’d been told to expect it, which made the contact a primary target. Time to call for some help. He radioed the Forward Air Controllers, currently operating out of the main control tower at Heathrow.

‘Ground Station Hotel, this is Bravo Echo-Niner. I have probable target acquisition. Request fighter vector.’

‘Vector approved, Bravo Echo-Niner. You have command,’ Heathrow replied. Al-Sadir then contacted the fighters, two F-22 Raptor Interceptors circling twenty-eight kilometres behind the Big Eye, and fed them the coordinates
of the target track. The fighters acknowledged and turned west on full afterburner.

‘We’ve got trouble.’

Sixty-eight miles ahead of the Big Eye, above the western edge of Salisbury Plain, Flight Lieutenant Lucas swore into his microphone as the Arabian radar emissions swept over their helicopter once again. They’d been lucky so far. Since leaving London, they’d found themselves in relatively clear country and Lucas had navigated a route away from urban areas and major traffic lanes, taking them in a curving path between the M4 and M3 motorways that saw them skirt Bracknell and Reading. They had detected some feverish radar activity behind them in London as scores of air-search radars began lighting up the sky, but the Dark Eagle was too low, too stealthy and heading further away with each passing second for them to constitute a problem. In fact, it was all going rather well and Lucas had begun to relax a little. Until now.

‘They’ve got us. Positive return that time,’ observed Stanton, the co-pilot. It was the fifth emission sweep in sixty seconds. They were being hunted and the radar signature of the hunter meant that it could only be one such aircraft, an Arabian Big Eye.

‘What’s the score?’ hissed Gibson
from the rear cabin.

‘We’ve been spotted by an Arabian surveillance aircraft and that means fighters. We don’t have long.’ Lucas’s trained eye took in their immediate environment. The ground beneath them was a patchwork of fields and hedges, with a small village to the north and a cluster of farm buildings to the west. Immediately ahead was a wheat field with a wooden hay barn at its southern end. Lucas banked the aircraft around, circling the large structure, its huge doors flung wide open. Empty. Not perfect but it would do.

‘Everybody hang on!’

Lucas pulled back on the control yoke and lifted a foot off one of the rudder pedals, stopping the helicopter in mid-air and putting it into a full one hundred and eighty degree turn. He dropped the craft seventy feet to the ground, twisting the collective back up to increase the power and soften the landing. Lowering the gear, he drove the aircraft right inside the barn and spun her around to face the doors, killing the power to the rotors. Harry winced
as he watched the blades
whip
up a storm of broken stalks and chaff, the tips thrashing the air only a few feet from the barn walls. He stared at the back of Lucas’s head,
both
hugely impressed
and terrified
by the manoeuvre. As the rotors dipped and the turbines wound down, they heard the roar of the incoming fighters.

‘Signal’s disappeared, Captain.’

Inside the cockpit of the Big Eye, Captain Al-Sadir had also noted the loss of contact with the helicopter and scanned his electronic
display. Its last known position was a mile or so south of a place called Erlestoke. No matter, the fighters were almost upon them. They would force them down and
pinpoint
their position, continuing to patrol the area until the helicopter assault teams could get there and capture the Infidels. Already Al-Sadir could hear the radio traffic of the helicopter
pilots as they clattered off the runway at Heathrow fifty-six kilometres to the east.

Harry winced again as the distant roar increased to an ear-splitting crescendo and two fast-moving shadows suddenly carved across the wheat field in front of them. The barn shook beneath the fighters’ thunderous passage and then they were gone, the rumble echoing around the horizon. Harry’s ears rang. He looked anxiously at the back of Lucas’s green helmet.

‘Did they see us?’

‘Did you see them?’

Over his headset, the lead Raptor pilot heard the negative response of his wingman. Where the devil had they gone? The Big Eye had vectored them in to the correct coordinates and they even had the target on their scopes for a second or two, but now it had gone. Obviously the helicopter had gone to ground, but where? The pilot thought it would be difficult enough to hide a helicopter quickly in all this open countryside, particularly with a couple of supersonic fighters hard on its tail. So where the devil had they gone?

‘Wait… wait… shut down now!’

The radar operator obeyed the command and flicked the switch off yet again. He’d done it so often that his thumb was beginning to ache badly.

There were three of them, British soldiers of the Royal Artillery, cooped up inside their MAAT-V air defence vehicle since yesterday. Apart from the odd break to urinate and stretch their legs, they had remained inside the stuffy confines of the armoured vehicle and waited.

Their tracked vehicle was parked in a small but well-camouflaged depression on the eastern edge of the Salisbury Plain training
area and, as far as they knew, they were the only unit for miles around. That was fine with the Commander. They were tasked to
operate independently, such was
the
nature of their particular function.

Along with other mechanized units, they’d
rumbled out from Tidworth Garrison two nights ago and scattered across Salisbury Plain for a
week
long
air defence exercise. Now that exercise had become frighteningly real.

Around six o’clock the previous evening they’d
lost contact with their exercise coordinating officer, after which they’d been unable to get in touch with anyone, either on the military net or on their personal cell phones. Something was seriously
wrong, but they decided to stay put. Sooner or later someone would get in touch with them.

It was just before sunset when the Commander heard the familiar sound of an army Land Rover bouncing along a nearby track. He ran through the trees to intercept it, nearly getting himself run over in the process. The panicked driver had told him that Tidworth garrison had been attacked. Car bombs had been used inside and outside several different barracks and that there were firefights breaking out all over the place. The order to head west had been given and all units and personnel were to make their way towards a marshalling area south of Bristol. The driver scribbled the coordinates on a notepad and ripped the sheet off, stuffing it into the Commander’s palm. The Land Rover sped away in a cloud of dust.

The Commander had informed his shocked crew. Only one of them was married and, despite the protests of his comrades, he’d decided to head back on foot to his home on the outskirts of Tidworth and find his family. None of the others could’ve stopped him.

Now they were three: Commander, radar operator and driver. They were to proceed west, which meant the threat was from the east. Four hundred feet away, camouflaged amongst a stand of Scots pines, their air-search radar mast confirmed that threat. The crew had watched with barely concealed anger as enemy aircraft entered British airspace unchallenged. They recorded the mass landings at Heathrow to the east, the high-flying military transports that passed
o
verhead on their way north to God knew where. How could this happen? Where were our lads? As the hours ticked by, it became frighteningly obvious that British forces had been neutralised. Everyone else, according to the panicked jeep driver, was headed west. So be it.

The commander reached another decision. They were well camouflaged and all the air traffic was currently
east of their position. They would stay where they were until first light, recording enemy flight details – course, speed, altitude, probable destinations, aircraft type – dumping the data onto their computers’ hard drives. When they headed west, they would go armed with something the top brass could use. The Commander was a courageous man; to scuttle away without gathering some intelligence seemed pointless and a little cowardly. So they stayed in place overnight, their instruments quietly recording huge volumes of data. The sun had just risen in the east when they spotted the Big Eye.