by Dc Alden
Eddie shook his head. ‘We’ve been on the move for 36 hours. I’ve slept for maybe four hours, tops. How d’you do it, Digger? How d’you stay so sharp?’
‘He’s running on pure hatred,’ Steve told him.
Digger grinned. ‘Fucking right I am.’
Eddie grinned too. He was too tired to know why.
3
Tom & Jerry
Eighteen months prior to the invasion of Ireland, the 72,000-ton transport ship MV Tonberg had bullied its way across a turbulent Atlantic Ocean, escorted by a US navy cruiser and a Royal Navy Type-45 destroyer. Their highly-classified mission was to ensure the safe and undetected passage of the Tonberg to the Scottish port of Thurso, the northernmost town on the British mainland. Thankfully, that mission had been a successful one, and the port and its harbour, unlike many to the south, were still intact.
When the massive Roll On-Roll Off vessel had finally docked, several thousand British and US troops of the new Atlantic Alliance had already arrived in Scotland, bringing with them their Linebacker and Stryker mobile missile launchers, as well as Rapier anti-aircraft systems to secure the airspace and protect the steady stream of troops, supplies, and munitions that were finally trickling back into the country, a reality that didn’t go unnoticed in Baghdad.
Aware of his strategic inability to secure the North Atlantic or threaten the US-Iceland-Scotland air corridor, the Caliph Wazir had concluded that the dark, mountainous region to the north of Hadrian’s Wall was unworthy of annexation. Instead, he emulated the strategy of those early Romans and secured the border against a future invasion.
Safely docked in Faslane and protected by a passive SAM envelope, the MV Tonberg unloaded her cargo, two important passengers, Tom and Jerry. Donated by their tech billionaire owner whose love for his country was equalled by his passion for innovation, both Tom and Jerry had been previously dismantled into sections and wrapped in thermal shield skins. When they finally left Thurso, they did so in two separate convoys, as quietly as their Oshkosh M1070 heavy transporters would allow.
One convoy was despatched to Gretna on the west coast, the other east, to the town of Morpeth, and it took almost 48 hours of careful route-planning across the dark and damaged country for the convoys to reach their destinations. Security was paramount.
At Gretna, Tom was delivered to an abandoned sewage plant east of that deserted settlement. Jerry was driven inside a giant car warehouse on Morpeth’s only industrial estate. Both locations lay just three miles to the north of the caliphate’s frontier, and as promised, Wazir had redrawn the maps, abandoning almost 1,200 square miles of English territory to form a new border that ran from the Solway Firth to the decimated town of Blyth on the east coast. The new frontier now ran in an almost straight line that was now only 63 miles long. And probably the deadliest 63 miles on earth.
The caliphate’s engineers had been busy since the British evacuation, creating a no-man’s-land that stretched two miles across at its widest point, and at its narrowest, just over a mile. Bulldozers, giant excavators, and the liberal use of high-explosives had levelled everything in between. Every field, every wood, every forest, every village and town, every commercial building, every tree, telegraph pole and lamppost, every abandoned vehicle, every road and pavement had been cut down, crushed, broken up and bulldozed into a vast no-man’s-land of broken earth, timber, brick concrete, and twisted metal. A kill-zone, watched over by a vast network of surveillance towers and observation posts, by snipers and heavy machine-guns, by mortars and rockets, and drones that buzzed across the man-made desolation, hunting for anything that moved.
The frontier was a scar across the landscape, a wound that still bled, and many had attempted to escape across its dangerous desolation. They believed that they could outrun the guns, avoid the countless mines and man-traps, and hide from the CCTV towers and surveillance drones. The bodies of the desperate and deluded lay where they fell, their corpses riddled with bullets or shredded by antipersonnel mines. Some unfortunates had died slow deaths out in the fields of wire, mud, and rubble. The bodies were left to rot, not as a cruel reminder to others but because the ground was too dangerous to recover them. Other corpses littered the wasteland, the bullet-riddled skins of balloons and parachutes, the broken wings of light aircraft, buried in the mud and concertina wire.
The frontier was a no-go zone in every sense of the phrase.
Yet in Gretna and Morpeth, the dark, nightmarish vision of the frontier had been duly ignored. Instead, preparations for Tom and Jerry had begun in earnest. Below ground, Alliance engineers had improved airflow and installed thermal shields, had broken the earth with heavy plant equipment, had ensured that the abandoned towns were covertly patrolled and the specialised labour force and their excavations remained undetected. By the time Tom and Jerry arrived at their respective sites, the enemy to the south was none the wiser and preparations had been completed.
At Gretna, Tom was lowered into a giant concrete shaft and assembled below ground. In Morpeth, Jerry had been put together on the floor of the warehouse, then driven down a steep ramp to a giant wall of mud and dirt. Inside their respective control rooms, Tom and Jerry’s technicians had completed their final checks, and a message had been relayed to the military command centre at Fort William, and from via satellite to the ground station at the NSA’s Fort Meade complex in Maryland.
The reply had come back in short order because everyone had known that time was of the essence and that the top-secret operation would be a slow one. The NSA had responded in due course, and the much-expected order for the teams controlling Tom and Jerry had finally been received. The encryption code deciphered the message which had comprised only two words:
COMMENCE DIGGING.
4
Law and Order
Edith sat behind the judge’s bench, the evidence laid out before her.
There were photographs and CCTV footage, and the men featured in them were the same four men who now stood in the dock, staring balefully at her. There was other evidence too, statements from the police and witnesses, most of which would’ve been dismissed by any competent defence lawyer in a pre-liberation courtroom, but those days were long gone.
The target of the conspiracy was a senior police chief, a woman known personally to Edith for many years. And like Edith, the commissioner had overcome her post-liberation circumstances and established herself as a senior figure within the new administration. The plan was to shoot her on her doorstep as she left for work. Edith wasn’t fully abreast of all the details, but that was neither here nor there. The accused had dared to challenge their new masters, and that was unforgivable.
She looked over her glasses at them, slouching in her dock in their garish prison overalls. The architect of the plot was a 52-year-old civil servant called Gordon Tyndall, a man whom Edith would have expected more from, who’d enjoyed an unblemished career, both before and after the Great Liberation. He was part of the establishment, a cog in the machinery of government, but reading his personnel file she noted that he’d never been invited to attend Common Purpose training. That told Edith everything she needed to know about the man.
Tyndall stared back at her with cold narrow eyes, with an arrogant jut to his unshaven jaw. As he stared up at her, his chest rose and fell rapidly, but its wasn’t fear Edith saw in those hard eyes. It was hate. She dropped her gaze back to the papers arranged across the bench in front of her, then turned on her microphone.
‘The evidence laid before me is both irrefutable and damning,’ she announced, her voice echoing around Court Number One. ‘The accused have been charged with the attempted murder of a senior police officer, a charge that the defence counsel has failed to answer adequately. The law therefore compels me to pronounce judgement…’ Edith cleared her throat, more for effect than anything else. This was a death-penalty case, and the public gallery was packed with relatives and friends of the accused. ‘Gordon Tyndall, Rupert Lovejoy, Henry Lovejoy, and Lynton Fairban
ks, you are hereby sentenced to death—’
‘Traitor!’
Her head snapped up. In her 36 years as a judge, no one – no one – had ever interrupted Edith Spencer, especially during a summation. She felt her blood boiling, staining her cheeks with angry red blotches. And to compound the outrage, the miscreant was still speaking.
‘That’s right, I’m talking to you, you dirty, stinking traitor. You and your kind will get your comeuppance, mark my words.’
Edith brought her gavel down several times, its sharp crack reverberating around the room. ‘Silence in court!’
‘You’ll pay for this in blood!’ one of the Lovejoy brothers bellowed. ‘All you cowards and collaborators, you’re dead, all of ya! Especially you, you vicious old cunt! And when they get you, I hope they do you slowly—’
A prison guard struck Lovejoy with a club, sparking a brawl in the dock. Family members roared defiance from the public gallery and the courtroom erupted into violence. Missiles and punches were thrown with furious abandon. It took a moment for Edith to snap out of her stunned immobility. She barked at the security officer guarding the narrow staircase to her bench.
‘Clear the court, idiot! And arrest everyone in the gallery!’ She saw a flicker of hesitation in the man’s eyes. ‘Now!’
Edith hurried back to her chambers. She closed the heavy door, shutting out the last echoes of disorder, sealing herself inside the quiet, comforting embrace of her private domain. She crossed the room and dropped into a Chesterfield couch, removing her black chiffon headscarf and clutching her black robe around her spare frame. She closed her eyes, her emotions swirling; anger, outrage, embarrassment, and yes, humiliation. The Tyndall creature had threatened her in her own courtroom, Lovejoy too. The sheer gall of it! Her heart pounded, and she struggled to compose herself. She had to take action.
She got to her feet and snatched up the phone. ‘I want the defence counsel in my chambers, now!’ She slammed the phone down without waiting for an answer. She opened the drinks cabinet and poured herself a finger of Scotch. She swallowed it in a single gulp and poured another. That one didn’t last long either. She put the glass back and sat behind her desk. The alcohol warmed and soothed her, and her heart rate slowed. She plucked a mint from the jar on her desk, just in case. After several deep, cleansing breaths, she was in better shape. Her head was clear, her emotions safely under control.
Except for one.
Word of the courtroom shambles would spread. The loss of Edith’s precious order could not be condoned. She sat at her computer and typed up the execution orders herself, printing them out and laying them across her desk in a neat row. She signed each one with her antique Mont Blanc fountain pen, a gift from the former president of the European Union. Her signature was a confident flourish, the official stamp of her office underpinning the authority that Edith considered a birth right. And soon the insubordinate creatures who had defiled her courtroom would bear witness to that power, and they would tremble.
The defence counsel arrived moments later, and the young man was clearly intimidated. Edith handed him the execution orders. He skimmed the four sheets of cream paper emblazoned with the crossed swords of the British Central Criminal Court. Then he looked at her.
‘Crucifixion, your honour?’
‘Is there a problem?’
The barrister shook his head. ‘No, not at all. My apologies.’
‘Make sure you file those with the clerk. Good day.’
And tell your clients to rot in hell, she wanted to bark at the departing barrister. Instead she imagined the faces of the convicted, the initial confusion, then horror. A biblical death, slow, barbaric, under the grey skies of the country they’d all professed to die for. And so they shall. It was a fitting punishment, Edith decided, and the caliphate administrators would approve, she was quite sure of that.
She spent the rest of the afternoon poring over legal papers and case notes. The judicial load was becoming heavier, and she believed that a significant percentage of cases being brought before the Central Criminal Court could be dealt with by less prestigious bodies. Perhaps a position paper would be in order, a prescriptive text that might persuade Congress to streamline the system in order that justice may be served more efficiently.
She was on her way home when the call came. The Mercedes was heading north towards the checkpoint at Euston when her mobile phone warbled somewhere in the bowels of her Louis Vuitton. When she saw the name on the display, she quickly swiped open the call.
‘Hugh, to what do I owe this—’
She swallowed the indignity of being interrupted for the second time that day and listened. When the call ended, she ordered her driver to turn around. Twenty-six minutes later, the Mercedes glided to a stop outside the former War Office building on Whitehall Place. The damage inflicted to its Edwardian Baroque architecture during the liberation had been repaired and the building restored to its former splendour. Edith was met in the lobby by an assistant and escorted to the well-appointed office suite on the fifth floor.
Hugh Davies, governor of the British Territories, was the man who’d summoned her. As she followed the assistant into his spacious office, she saw Davies standing at the glass wall looking out over Whitehall. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he rocked gently on the heels of his highly-polished brogues as Edith’s presence was announced. The assistant closed the double doors on her way out, and Edith saw Davies’ mouth move in the glass’ reflection.
‘Crucifixion, Edith? Don’t you think that was a bit of an overreaction?’ His head tilted to the sky as a swarm of military helicopters clattered overhead, barely audible through the thick glass.
‘I believe it was justified,’ she told him.
‘Perhaps, but there’s a bigger picture to consider.’
‘The law has no grey areas.’
Davies turned away from the window. ‘The whole bloody world’s a grey area.’
He waved Edith into a chair and sat down behind his huge, polished walnut desk. Fixed to the wall behind him was The Great Seal of the Caliphate, framed by two flags, the Union Jack and the black flag of the Shahada. The Union flag was a concession, a show of good faith by the Islamic Congress of the Western Territories. Davies folded his arms on the walnut monstrosity’s smooth surface.
‘You had the families arrested. Forty people, now languishing in Pentonville prison. Some of them children.’
Edith tapped her chin with a bony finger. ‘Yes, I’d forgotten all about them. There was quite the hullabaloo in court. Threats were made, Hugh, not just to myself, but to our authority. I can have the recordings sent to you if you wish.’
Davies shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary.’ He took a breath and exhaled slowly. ‘But crucifixion, Edith? That isn’t going to play well with the public. To be blunt, it’s pretty bloody barbaric.’
‘It’s common across the continent.’
‘We do things differently here.’
Edith gave him a frosty stare. ‘They intended to shoot their victim on her doorstep. In front of her partner.’
‘Be that as it may, people will be horrified. It could drive many of them into the arms of the resistance. That’s the last thing we need right now, especially with the—’ Davies stopped himself.
Edith raised an eyebrow. ‘With what?’
Davies picked up a pencil and rolled it between his fingers. A nervous gesture, Edith suspected. ‘There’s news. From abroad.’
‘You mean the nuclear strike in China?’
Davies frowned. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Are we in danger?’
‘I don’t know. Congress is playing its cards very close. They informed me as a courtesy.’
‘So, there’s nothing to worry about. China’s halfway across the world.’
Davies winced, the lines around his eyes deepening, as if he were in pain. ‘There’s more. Ireland has fallen to the Alliance.’
Edith felt h
er heart skip a beat. ‘So, it’s true?’
‘You’ve heard?’
‘Only rumours.’
‘Well, they’re rumours no longer. A task force landed on the west coast a month ago. Congress tried to explain away the flashes and thunder across the Irish Sea as military exercises, but that cover story quickly fell apart when caliphate soldiers began washing up on Welsh beaches.’
Edith’s shoulders slumped. Harry Beecham and his American puppet-masters had vowed never to put the people of Europe in harm’s way. They’d suffered enough, he’d declared publicly. A political solution would be found, he’d promised, because the truth was the Alliance had no stomach for a bloody campaign on their own soil. They’d been fooled. She’d been fooled.
‘Didn’t anyone see this coming?’
‘You can’t hide a task force, Edith. Yes, Baghdad knew, and they ordered a huge arms shipment from Beijing to counter the threat, but then came the nuke and the deal collapsed. It made the difference. That, and the military superiority of the invaders. I heard the caliphate’s withdrawal was a complete shambles.’
Edith plucked nervously at the loose flesh beneath her chin. ‘Does this mean Britain is next?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But you’re a former military man. You must have an opinion.’
Davies offered a wry smile. ‘I was a squadron commander in the Logistics Corps, so I’m no expert I’m afraid. What I can tell you is that getting squeezed on two fronts never ends well. I suspect that’s why they’ve sent General Mousa here.’
Edith felt icy fingers brush the back of her neck. ‘The General Mousa?’
‘The very same. He’s taken charge. And he’s reinforcing.’ Davies glanced towards the double doors. ‘Baghdad is shipping half a million troops to these shores.’
Edith’s jaw slackened. ‘Half a million?’