INVASION: UPRISING (Invasion Series Book 3)

by Dc Alden

  She led her team of black-clad fighters along the service corridor towards the growing buzz of laughter and conversation from the nearby restaurant. Her heart beat fast, her breath, rapid. She was pumped, juiced to the max. She was on a mission; the biggest one she’d undertaken so far. But this time it was different. This time she knew she was not alone.

  She held the pistol out in front of her, arm stiff, as they approached the swing doors of the restaurant kitchen. Behind the big circular windows, staff hurried back and forth. Suddenly, one door swung open and a young waitress backed out into the corridor carrying a tray full of dessert dishes. When she saw the masks and guns running towards her, she dropped the tray, her feet frozen, her hands clasped over her mouth to stifle the scream she thought might get her killed.

  Crockery shattered. Chocolate brownies and ice cream were stamped into the carpet. Roz held a finger to her lips as she shoved the girl back into the kitchen. Behind her, the team spread out, filing past the catering tables, guns up. White-coated chefs and terrified waiting staff were herded into a corner, their hands held high.

  ‘Go home,’ Roz told them, ‘right now. Take the stairs and leave by the staff entrance. Don’t speak to anyone, don’t call anyone, move quickly and quietly, and don’t stop ’til your home. Be with your families tonight, got it?’ They nodded silently. ‘Go!’

  They hurried out into the service corridor, shepherded by two of her team. With the kitchen staff gone, Roz went to the double doors and stared out into the restaurant where sixty members of the National Assembly (North-East), and their families and friends, were rounding off an evening of fine dining.

  As her eyes roamed across the faces of Newcastle’s grandees, she didn’t see doubt, worried frowns, or troubled conversations. Instead she saw happy, smiling faces around those busy tables. She saw smart suits and cocktail dresses, and jewellery that shimmered beneath the intimate lighting. She heard laughter and soft music, and her blood boiled. She saw her beloved, blindfolded Brian, lashed to a wooden post, heard him calling her name, his voice echoing around the stands of St James’ Park before the gunfire severed his last words. She watched them with hostile eyes, the traitors who occupied the Windows on the Tyne restaurant, the quislings who’d sold their country out for personal safety and a comfortable life, who’d turned a blind eye to the suffering and death of their countryfolk. When the caliphate had seized power, those same people had made a choice.

  They were about to discover they’d chosen badly.

  Roz pushed open the door and stepped into the restaurant. The others fanned out left and right, hurrying to cut off the exits. For a moment, no one reacted, the soft cones of light above the tables throwing the periphery into shadow. Roz watched them, surprised that no one had yet seen them. She looked beyond the enormous glass windows to the Tyne Bridge, arching across the nearby river, its superstructure slick with rain. Roz loved her city, loved its people. Except for the ones seated before her.

  It took almost 20 seconds for their presence to register and the first scream to shatter the ambience. Diners scrambled to their feet. Glasses toppled and smashed. Roz raised her gun.

  ‘No one move!’ she yelled. She swept the pistol across their ashen faces, forcing them back into their seats. ‘Be quiet, all of you!’

  The room faded into silence. Women and men kept their heads down, frightened to meet the vengeful eyes behind the ski masks that watched them. Roz weaved her way through the diners until she reached the governor’s table, larger than the others, loaded with bottles of alcohol. She looked at the faces around that table. She saw concern there, but no genuine fear. They’d become accustomed to power and enjoyed wielding it. She stood over the table, glared at the governor, Gerrard Cox, his bald head and rotund face flushed with alcohol. Next to him was the former chief constable of Northumbria Police, Robert Keenan, now Newcastle’s chief of internal security. He wore his uniform, the police insignia replaced with the crossed swords of the caliphate, and he watched Roz with sharp, unblinking eyes, noting her description for his report. Flanking Cox was his chief advisor, Debbie Bacon, the city council’s former head of human resources, a woman who’d become a ruthless zealot, drunk on power. Roz smiled behind her mask. She barked an order over her shoulder.

  ‘Weed them out!’

  She never took her eye off the traitors as three of her people yanked several pre-selected individuals to their feet and herded them across the room.

  ‘Stop it! Leave them alone!’

  Roz turned. One of the female guests, a middle-aged woman wearing too much makeup, was on her high-heeled feet, shouting across the room as a man from her table was forced away at gunpoint.

  ‘How dare you barge in here!’ she spluttered drunkenly, spittle flying from a vicious slash of red lipstick. ‘Do you know who we are? What we can do to you?’

  The man sitting next to her tugged her arm. ‘Sit down, Marjorie, for God’s sake!’

  The woman turned on him. ‘Don’t touch me!’ She looked around the room. ‘Well? Isn’t anyone going to do something? Or are we going to let these resistance scum just march in here and point guns at us?’

  Roz walked towards her. Marjorie saw her coming and cocked her chin aggressively. ‘Don’t get in my face, bitch. If you didn’t have that gun, I’d tear your fucking eyes out.’

  ‘Majorie!’ someone bellowed.

  Roz raised her pistol and held it against the woman’s temple. Marjorie’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t have the balls.’

  Roz pulled the trigger, the gunshot deafening, the bullet exiting the back of Marjorie’s head and shattering one of the floor-to-ceiling glass panes across the room. Blood, hair, and grey matter splattered across the table behind her. Marjorie’s legs buckled, her coiffure cracking off the table’s edge. She collapsed in a heap of lifeless meat at Roz’s feet. Blood oozed from the hole at the back of her head.

  ‘Anyone else want to gob off?’ Roz looked around the room, but there were no takers. ‘When I say move, you’ll get up and leave the hotel by the back stairs. Go home, while you’ve got the chance, and trust me, it’s the only one you’ll get. Move!’

  And they did, all of them, stampeding for the door, knocking into tables, falling to the ground, trampling over broken glass, over each other. As the door swung shut behind the stragglers, Roz heard heavy clanging coming from the kitchen; that would be her boys opening up the gas pipes, positioning the IEDs, setting the traps. She checked her watch. They didn’t have long, five minutes max. She turned to the nine traitors, pre-selected for retribution. She saw the defiance on their faces and wished she had longer.

  ‘Against the wall, all of you.’

  The governor and his people strolled across the room. They stood against the wall facing Roz and her line of guns, staring each other down like a Mexican stand-off. Roz tugged the ski mask from her face. She saw the governor drop his chin and stare at his shoes.

  ‘Look at me,’ she told him. Cox looked up, the red flush of alcohol now a chalky grimace.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Just tell us what you want.’

  Keenan sneered. ‘They’re going to murder us in cold blood, Gerry, can’t you see that?’

  Cox sobbed. Roz stared at the security chief, who stared right back.

  ‘I’ve seen you twice in person—’

  ‘Congratulations.’ Keenan’s face was a mask of contempt.

  ‘The first time was at the Pride march a few years ago. You were waving from the police float, with your little rainbow lanyard around your neck, surrounded by all your friends in the LGBT community.’ Her face darkened. ‘How many of them did you have arrested? How many were hanged on your orders?’

  ‘I don’t make the rules.’

  ‘No, you just enforce them, right?’ She took a step closer, the gun hanging by her side. ‘The second time I saw you was at St James’ Park, standing on the pitch, sucking up to your new masters while their soldiers shot my husband and a hundred others right in front of you.�
� Roz shook her head. ‘You didn’t bat an eyelid.’

  Keenan held her gaze. There was no remorse there, no empathy, just a troubling conviction that Roz only now understood. He’d become a fanatic, a tyrant. Unbridled power did that to people.

  ‘They’d broken the law, defied the regime.’

  ‘You’ve had thousands deported. Men, women, children, babies, all gone to God knows where.’

  ‘Bigots and troublemakers,’ Keenan said. ‘And nothing compared to the reprisals that will decimate this city if you pull that trigger.’

  A cold, damp wind gusted through the missing window. Roz looked out across the river to the north of the city. ‘There’ll be no more executions, Keenan. No more deportations. You’re no longer in charge, see?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  It was Bacon who spoke, the dumpy former human resources manager who’d shown not a shred of humanity in the last three brutal years. Roz pointed towards the shattered window.

  ‘I’m talking about the British troops across the river, thousands of them already in the city, waiting for the signal.’

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Cox blustered. ‘They’ll never get across the frontier.’

  ‘They’re watching this hotel as we speak,’ she told them. The traitors wavered, their icy defiance melting fast. ‘They’re waiting for the signal. Your deaths will be that signal. Remember that as you die.’

  ‘Rot in hell,’ Keenan cursed.

  Cox shook his head. ‘Please, don’t do this. We’ll hand ourselves in, surrender.’

  Her radio crackled. ‘Go for Roz,’ she said.

  ‘We’re set,’ came the response.

  Roz took a step backwards. The other ski masks raised their weapons.

  ‘Wait!’ Cox stammered, holding up his hands. ‘We had to do what they told us. What else could we have done?’

  Roz regarded the fat slob with utter contempt. ‘Better to die on your feet than live on your knees, Gerry.’

  And that’s where she shot him, first in the right knee, and then, as he dropped to the floor, through his left knee. There was a sudden, desperate chorus of panic and screaming, and then her boys opened fire, chopping the rest of them down to the carpet, their legs shattered by bullets.

  Roz watched them as they moaned in agony, their bloodied hands clutching their wounds. ‘Get the juice, quickly!’

  The ski masks returned with jerry cans of petrol. Roz snatched one and stood over Keenan. His right knee was shattered, and another bullet had broken his shin. He looked up at Roz with genuine fear in his eyes, the arrogance finally extinguished. Good. He thrashed and spluttered as she poured petrol over his face and uniform. She did the same to Bacon, Cox, and the others, soaking the surrounding carpet. She tossed the empty can to one side. Their painful cries, the coughing, and their wails of desperation and terror filled the restaurant. She knelt over Keenan, took the small orange tube out of her pocket and waved it in his face. His eyes widened.

  ‘Please…’

  She unscrewed the cap, pulled out the tab inside, then jammed it under Keenan’s backside. She smiled and patted his cheek. ‘Whatever you do, don’t move.’

  Roz led her people back out into the service corridor and down to the ground floor. The phone system was reconnected, and she made the breathless call from the security office.

  ‘Please, send someone quickly! There’s been a shooting at the Hilton, in the top-floor restaurant. Terrorists with guns have taken over! People are dying! Help us!’

  She left the phone on the table, the line open. Outside, they piled inside the van and Roz yanked the ski mask off her head. Seconds later they were pulling away from the hotel and heading back across the Tyne. She looked in the rear-view mirror and saw everyone had their masks up, grins across their faces. Sitting next to her, even Jed was smiling. She reached over and ruffled his hair.

  ‘You did good, Jed. You’re a proper little soldier. Your mum and dad would be proud of you.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘I didn’t really do anything, Aunt Roz.’

  She smiled. ‘There’ll be plenty more chances, son. The night is just beginning.’

  ‘Here they come!’

  From the third-floor window of a deserted office building, Eddie saw blue lights flickering through the streets of Newcastle as security forces converged on the hotel across the river. Mac stood next to him, a spotter scope pressed to his eye.

  ‘Air is inbound,’ he reported, then they all heard it, the unmistakable whop-whop-whop of a large helicopter.

  Eddie pointed to the west. ‘There, three o’clock.’

  Collision lights winked in the distance, approaching from the south-west. Moments later the Merlin roared over the arch of the Tyne Bridge before banking hard and flaring above the hotel roof.

  ‘Assault team,’ Mac observed through his scope.

  Steve was looking through the sight of his rifle. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘This close to the frontier, the Hajis are jumpy.’ Mac glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s go. The fireworks are about to start.’

  They made their way down to the lobby where the rest of Nine Platoon assembled. They stood quietly in the darkness, and Eddie knew they were only moments away from the commencement of hostilities. He was ready. More than that, he just wanted it to start.

  He heard Sarge’s voice echo around the lobby. ‘Remember lads, the second they find out we’re here, they’ll throw the kitchen sink at us.’

  It was Digger’s familiar snarl that answered him. ‘I fucking hope so.’

  22

  Light ‘em Up

  Henri saw the darkness ahead and felt the pressure rising once more.

  Another 24 hours and you’ll be back in France, he told himself. Summer was coming, and he hoped their next assignment would be something far less stressful, like ripping the TGV down to the Côte d’Azur for caliphate VIPs and their families. He was getting too old for such nerve-wracking work.

  They left the safety of the lights behind them as the engine rolled up the final 200 metres of tunnel and resurfaced at the Folkestone terminal. Like its sister across the channel, the transport hub was blanketed in darkness, and as the train rumbled out in the night air, Henri’s mouth was suddenly dry.

  ‘Welcome to England,’ Jean-Michel quipped.

  Henri said nothing as he drank from a bottle of water. He opened his side window and leaned outside. The air was fresh and salty, and Henri took several deep lungfuls to calm his growing anxiety.

  There wasn’t much to see, aside from the usual crews loitering trackside, although the British faces that watched the huge train rumbling past them were far more sullen than their French counterparts.

  Henri cursed them for their stubbornness. The French had accepted the slow and inevitable conquest of their country with a Gallic shrug and a c’est la vie. They had their own troublemakers, men and women who clung to an outdated vision of the old Republic, but their numbers were few and their ranks riddled with caliphate spies. They had beheaded a dozen of them in the Place Vendôme last month, an event attended by several thousand people. Such a crowd had shocked Henri. It was beyond his comprehension why anyone would care to witness such mediaeval barbarism, but he’d kept his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself. As long as he did his job, he’d get by. One day, things might change again.

  The train clanked across a set of points, and Henri looked out of the window. Roughly 500 metres of the train had cleared the tunnel so far. ‘Keep her at ten kilometres, Jean-Michel, until we—’

  CRACK!

  Henri felt the detonation beneath his feet, and then the locomotive rattled violently and lurched to the left. The screech of grinding metal was almost deafening.

  ‘Brake!’ he yelled, but Jean-Michel was already there, yanking the levers as Henri disengaged the engine’s motor. The train’s momentum continued to drive it forward, its wheels biting into gravel beds as it rolled off the broken track. Both drivers held on tight as the 30,000-tonne
train shuddered and several cars behind them rolled off the tracks, twisting their couplings. The screeching, deafening ring of buckling metal finally stopped as the train twisted to a halt.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘Shut it all down,’ Henri ordered, flicking switches and twisting dials. Jean-Michel knocked off the power, and the cab was plunged into darkness. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust. The engine had tilted to the left, not dangerously so, but enough to force both men to climb out on the other side.

  Henri dropped to the track and made his way around the front of the engine…

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ he whispered.

  Several of the freight cars had left the tracks and were twisted at dangerous angles. All of them were closed cars, and Henri knew they contained munitions.

  ‘Shit! This is no longer a delivery,’ Jean-Michel said. ‘It’s a recovery operation.’

  They walked back down the track. Henri crouched down and shone his torch beneath one of the tilting munitions cars, unwilling to get any closer. The rail beneath was blackened and buckled.

  ‘What could’ve caused that?’

  Henri shrugged. ‘An electrical surge, perhaps. Blew the rail off its sleeper. I’ve seen it happen before.’

  ‘And we still haven’t cleared the tunnel.’

  Jean-Michel was right. There were several cars still inside the distant, dark cavern, and his heart sank. A recovery like this was a complex operation involving specialist equipment. It would mean an additional 24 hours at the very least.

  Further down the train, he saw the shadows of soldiers jumping to the ground and stamping their way towards the wreck. But that’s all he saw. What he didn’t see were the track and maintenance crews rushing to the scene with torches and equipment. Where were those sullen-faced gangs he’d seen only a few minutes ago? They should be swarming all over this by now.

  Beside him, Jean-Michel crudely verbalised Henri’s troubled observations.