by Dc Alden
‘I got it.’
He watched the youngster walk back to his bed space. Youngster. Digger was 18, a year younger than him, yet he’d read Eddie like a seasoned pro. They’d aged, all of them, since this thing had started. They weren’t boys any more. They were older, wiser.
The question that haunted Eddie was, how much older would any of them get?
17
Bertie Smalls
Bertie hurried along the pavement towards the café on the Grays Inn Road. It was breezy, but the sky was clear and blue, and the temperature reasonably mild. Spring had almost sprung, but they weren’t there yet. Bertie preferred the summer, not only for the weather but because The Witch liked to decamp to her modest estate in Cornwall for a month. She enjoyed the sea air, the country walks, and the seclusion of her private beach. The estate had been a gift from the Islamic Congress, and the first time he went there, Bertie wondered what had happened to the real owners. He didn’t dwell on it, though. There was nothing he could do about it and besides, he enjoyed being there. Or rather, he used to enjoy it. The future was worryingly uncertain.
Two cop cars cruised past, windows open, suspicious eyes watching the pavements. Bertie had noticed a lot more of them on the streets lately, and a lot more soldiers too. The increased para-military presence seemed to confirm the rumours trickling down from the frontier; Alliance troops were landing in Scotland, and in big numbers, so maybe that wasn’t suspicion he saw in those cops’ eyes. Maybe it was fear. Bertie hoped so.
The news would help pile the pressure on Wazir, which meant that they might find a political solution. Maybe they’d all pack up and piss off back to the caliphate, but Bertie dismissed that thought. There were mobile rocket launchers in every park in London, tens of thousands of troops stationed around the capital, and according to the TV, more were coming across the channel every day. They were reinforcing, getting ready for a tear-up. If war was coming, it would get ugly.
Maybe George knew more. Bertie hadn’t seen him since the night of the pickup, and he was nervous about meeting him. He figured that if George knew about his treachery he’d be in big trouble, but their association went back a long way. They’d work it out, somehow.
He pushed open the door of the café, and the scent of greasy food washed over him. He saw George sitting in a booth at the back of the restaurant. He weaved between the busy tables and sat down.
‘Good to see you, George.’
‘Bertie.’
George was plucking at French fries and dipping them into a blob of ketchup on his plate. He stared at Bertie as he munched his food. Bertie squirmed.
‘Everything all right?’
George shrugged. ‘You tell me.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘What happened, Bertie? The night of the handover.’
He knows. ‘There’s nothing to tell, George. I picked ‘em up and drove ‘em to the meadow. Then the Yanks flew ‘em off. And you should’ve seen the aircraft they used. Never seen anything—’
‘So, it all went as planned,’ George butted in.
‘Of course.’
George wiped his fingers with a napkin, folded his thick arms, and leaned across the table. ‘So why am I hearing that it was you who begged the Yanks for a ride out of here?’
Bertie swallowed. Time for Plan B. He held his hands up in surrender.
‘Cards on the table? Yes, it’s true, I tried to make a run for it. Do you know why? It was a double-cross, George. I caught Al-Kaabi talking on a phone. You said no phones, right? When I confronted them, Al-Kaabi pulled a gun. It all kicked off after that, and I only just fought ‘em off. They were going to kill me, George.’ He thought about Gates then, his bizarre and troubling death. It still haunted him.
‘You’re lying.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Al-Kaabi was risking everything to get out.’
‘No, George. He had us fooled, him and the poof. The whole thing was a set-up to expose the resistance. And yes, I tried to blag my way on board that transport because I panicked. That’s the God’s honest truth.’
‘So, Gates was in on it too?’
‘Defo. I told you, they were whispering in the car.’
George stared across the table. ‘So, let me get this straight; Al-Kaabi and Gates faked a gay relationship to suck you into a conspiracy, the aim of which was to expose your involvement in the resistance. A conspiracy that also involved The Witch and Judge Hardy.’
‘I know it sounds mad, but what else could it be?’
George leaned back in his seat and ordered a coffee. He said nothing, not until the waiter set the cup down in front of him. George sugared it and sipped it carefully. Then he glared at Bertie.
‘Let me ask you a question; do you think I’m some sort of mug?’
Bertie shook his head. ‘Of course not. What d’you mean?’
‘If any of that lot thought you had something to do with the resistance, you’d be in a cell somewhere with your balls wired up to the mains.’
‘Are you calling me a liar, George?’
George leaned across the table until his nose was almost touching Bertie’s. ‘Yes, I am. Because your story is a crock of shit. I think you killed them in cold blood, then you tried to buy your way out with Al-Kaabi’s intel. After the Yanks fucked you off, you made up that ridiculous fairy tale to cover your tracks.’
‘No, I—’
‘Yes, you did. See, if you’d stuck to the plan, the lovebirds would’ve flown the nest and nobody would’ve been any the wiser. Now the cops have got two bodies, one of them a military intelligence spy, and the other a homosexual who’ll lead them right to The Witch’s door. Your door, Bertie. And after they’ve lifted you, after they’ve shaved your Jaffas and run a couple of hundred volts through them, it’ll be my name bouncing off the walls of that cell, won’t it?’
Bertie’s voice was a desperate whisper. ‘I’d never grass you up, George, you know that.’
‘I can’t take that risk, Bertie. But don’t worry,’ he said, patting a large paw on Bertie’s sleeve, ‘I’m going to find somewhere safe for you to go. Where no one will ever find you.’
Bertie swallowed. ‘Where?’
‘Somewhere safe,’ George repeated. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood. He pulled on a dark windbreaker and slipped on a pair of sunglasses, then he rapped a knuckle on the table. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
Bertie watched him go, realising that George had no intention of seeing Bertie to safety. None at all. He knew the man too well, knew his tells, like the knuckle on the table. George used that one back in the old days, a deliberate gesture, to signal his boys to get ready before the tables went over and the beer glasses started flying. Like a whistle, or a flare gun. Which meant someone was watching, listening. Which meant Bertie was finished.
You stupid idiot…
Bertie scrambled out of his seat and left the café. He hurried into a quiet residential street towards Holborn where the Toyota was parked. He’d barely gone 50 metres when he heard footsteps running behind him. Two men had followed him into the side street, slowing their pace when they saw him. One of them had a phone clamped to his ear. The other one, a sizeable lump with ginger hair, was trying his best to look casual and failing miserably. Bertie didn’t recognise either of them, but he knew one thing for certain; George had sent them.
He kept his pace brisk but casual. There was another street a few metres ahead, and when he reached it, Bertie strolled around the corner. Then he sprinted along the pavement, arms and legs pumping, eyes searching for a hiding place. The third house along had an impressive, unkempt hedge outside and Bertie ducked into the gate and crawled behind it.
A few moments later, the runners pounded past his hiding place. After they’d faded, Bertie got to his feet. He took a careful peek along the pavement and saw his would-be assassins some distance away, looking around, heads swivelling left and right. Bertie crouched low and headed back the way he’d come. At t
he end of the road he turned right towards Holborn, and then he ran again, as fast as he could.
By the time he got to his car, he was sweating heavily and wheezing like an asthmatic. He started the Toyota, pulled out into the traffic and headed west, then north towards Bloomsbury Square. He saw a cop car passing in the opposite direction, and for the first time since the invasion, Bertie was glad to see them.
Fucking George, he simmered as he drove past St Pancras station and through the checkpoint. All those years they’d known each other, none of it counted for shit. Now Bertie was just another slag, another wrong ‘un, a potential grass. That label hurt Bertie the most.
He parked the car in Belsize Park and bought some groceries from the supermarket on Haverstock Hill. Twenty minutes later, safely ensconced back behind The Witch’s high Hampstead walls, Bertie washed the car again. He’d already washed it twice since he’d got back from Buckinghamshire, in a paranoid quest to remove every speck of mud, every blade of grass, every smear of blood that could implicate him in the murders. So, he scrubbed it again, inside and out, washing the seats with a mild detergent, hoovering them until he thought he might suck out the stitching. His journey that night couldn’t be traced electronically, so he was in the clear on that front, but physically, he had to be sure. Just in case someone came knocking.
When he was done, he sat in the kitchen and chatted with Chef as he prepared dinner. Every other word was a curse or an expletive, but the man knew how to cook, and Bertie was happy to be his tasting guinea pig. He was just starting to relax when a bell chimed.
‘No rest for the wicked,’ Bertie said, getting to his feet. Chef laughed and called him a lazy shitbag.
He trudged upstairs, passing through the dark-panelled hallway to The Witch’s study, passing the oils and watercolours on loan from the National Gallery. Now that Gates was gone, Bertie wondered if they’d ever be handed back. He knew nothing about fine art; all he saw were a lot of fat, naked birds and chubby cherubs, a lot of hazy sunsets and vases of flowers. All except one. It had never bothered Bertie before, but lately, it seemed to taunt him every time he walked past it, like one of those laughing cavalier paintings where the eyes followed you around the room.
It was a mediaeval representation of the crucifixion, Jesus and the thieves on either side of him, all dying under a dreary sky, a distraught, ashen-faced crowd at their impaled feet. It was stark and unnerving, and a shiver ran down Bertie’s spine as he knocked on the study door.
Perhaps he’d give the car another wash, just in case.
Henri Platt and Jean Michel brought their diesel locomotive to a screeching, clattering halt at the red light, a mere ten kilometres short of the Eurotunnel in northern France. Henri opened the window and looked down the length of the train. They’d stopped in a forest, which was good, Henri decided. At least they were out of sight. He picked up the radio-telephone and spoke to the line controller for less than a minute before hanging up.
Jean-Michel raised an expectant eyebrow.
‘Trouble ahead,’ Henri told him. ‘We’ve been ordered to wait.’
‘For how long?’
‘A troop train has broken down at the tunnel entrance. Shut everything down. Residual power only.’
Henri heard whistles and stuck his head out of the window again. Soldiers were jumping down from the train and deploying into the surrounding woods. Above them, the overcast sky threatened rain. Henri hoped that was all it threatened.
‘We’re exposed here.’
Jean-Michel chuckled. ‘Still worried about those American satellites?’
Henri grimaced but said nothing. He had a bad feeling, and this was the third incident that had forced them to interrupt their journey across France. Outside of Lyon, a soldier had fallen ill with appendicitis, forcing an unscheduled stop. Later, the train had hit a herd of deer as they’d motored through the Avesnois National Park. And now this, Henri fretted.
The broken-down train was ferrying a combat division to England. Those troops would have to detrain and the locomotive towed out of the way, a process that would take hours.
‘Of all the places to break down,’ Jean-Michel complained.
‘Just our luck,’ Henri agreed. ‘They’ll keep us here until sunset.’
‘You think?’
‘That’s what I would do. No sense in crowding the terminal.’
‘We’d make a nice fat target for the American cruise missiles, no?’
Henri gave him a withering look. ‘Don’t say such things.’
‘I’m kidding.’ Jean-Michel winked. He unwrapped a cheese baguette and took a bite. ‘A long time since I’ve been to England. Me and a few pals went to see France play England at Wembley once. It was a good time, a lot of fun. Doubt there’s much to laugh about anymore.’
But Henri wasn’t listening. Instead he leaned out of the window and looked down the length of the train. It curved out of sight, the last third lost behind the trees. Soldiers wandered beside the tracks, weapons held loosely, chatting, smoking. No one was expecting any trouble. He glanced back up at the sky.
No one except Henri.
18
The Fuse
As soon as the MSS-2 had taken off from that Buckinghamshire meadow, the data that Al-Kaabi had killed and died for was sent via encrypted micro-burst to the NSA’s dedicated communications hub at the Keflavik Naval Air Station in Iceland.
From there it was bounced to Fort Meade, Maryland, and within two hours of Bertie being forcibly ejected from the top-secret aircraft, military planners at Site R, the secret defence facility known as Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Adams County, Pennsylvania, were sifting through it. They knew that the military intelligence officer who’d stolen the data would already be compromised, so they had to move fast, trawling through the thousands of files, cherry-picking, debating, discarding. In time, intel specialists would pore over it byte by byte and extract anything useful that could be factored into future strategic planning. What they needed now, however, was a quick win.
It came in the form of the transcribed notes, previously hand-written by the now-dead Al-Kaabi, digitised at the naval station in Iceland, and almost overlooked by the planners. It was a record of a recent planning meeting held by senior intelligence staff at Northwood, a gathering that included one of the caliphate’s top generals, Faris Mousa. In his notes, Al-Kaabi had described the atmosphere as tense, and the orders issued of the highest priority. It was just the opportunity the planners were looking for.
The conference table was swept clear. Digitised maps were projected onto the data wall, overlaid with weather charts, road and rail routes, and theatre-wide strategic assets maps, forming a digital tapestry of 21st-century military planning. A strategy was agreed upon, and a telephone call quickly followed. The president arrived from Camp David shortly thereafter, a six-mile journey made through the tunnel system that connected both facilities. The planners presented their commander-in-chief with a rapid, detailed brief. The president listened for several minutes, asked a dozen pertinent questions, then ordered Prime Minister Harry Beecham to be dialled into the briefing.
From his own secure facility outside of Boston, Harry and his military team watched the video presentation. The window of opportunity would only be open for so long, he learned. Ultimately, the decision was his, the president told him. Your backyard, your people.
Harry Beecham didn’t blink.
Do it.
The order was received 2,500 miles away in Iceland at the US Air Force DABS, located in a dark, icy valley near the rugged north-east coast of the island. The Deployable Air Base System comprised a collection of transportable pods, shipping containers, and vehicles that could be deployed anywhere on the planet and stand up as a fully operational airbase without the need to plug into local utilities. Airbase-in-a-box, they called it, and the site located deep inside the narrow Hallestrom Valley was self-sufficient and about as covert as they could make it. Hidden beneath a vast roof of emission-reflecting
camouflage netting and panels, the DABS was invisible to prying electronic eyes. And it needed to be, because it was a temporary home to two of the US air force’s most secretive and expensive aircraft ever built.
The Northrop-Grumman B-21 Raiders rolled out of their hardened shelters and on to the two-mile stretch of arrow-straight civilian tarmac road widened and strengthened to accommodate a range of military aircraft. The Raiders were state-of-the-art stealth bombers, but unlike the MSS-2, these aircraft were powered by twin F-140 jet engines, albeit quiet, fuel-efficient, and hugely powerful. Like the MSS-2, however, the Raiders used a level of stealth technology unrivalled on planet Earth. Built with composite materials and incorporating an entire range of radiation, acoustic, and thermal absorbing technologies, the Raiders could fly low and slow, high and subsonic, yet never emit a signature bigger than a small flock of tiny birds. An anti-aircraft system had yet to be developed that could detect a Raider, and that included most of the American ones.
Looking similar to their predecessor, the B-2 Spirit bomber, the Raiders were matte black, had no tail fins, and resembled a large sweeping wing that bulged slightly in the centre of the airframe. Inside that bulge, the pilots manoeuvred their aircraft until they lined up one behind the other down the centre line of the empty Icelandic road.
The lead aircraft was nicknamed Doolittle after the famous World War Two raid on Tokyo. Inside the cockpit, the pilots sat quietly, their eyes scanning the high-tech instrumentation panels and touch screens, the Raider’s engines whistling on low power as the pilots waited for the order. Two hundred metres behind Doolittle, the crew in the other Raider, Hornet, did the same. Across the snow-capped valley, they received the order from Raven Rock inside the communication pod and passed it on to the mobile ATC trailer. Moments later, Doolittle and Hornet received the launch order.