Warlord: An Alex Hawke Novel

by Ted Bell

  When that was done, Smith placed a handwritten script in front of the man and bent the microphone toward him.

  “You’re going to make this announcement. You’re going to do it with a pistol at your head so you don’t make any stupid mistakes. And you are going to sound as natural as possible under the circumstances. Let’s do a rehearsal, shall we? Read it first without the live microphone.”

  He got through it, with only a slight tremor in his voice. In his mind, he saw nothing but the faces of his beloved family.

  “Good enough. Try to give it a more ‘just a minor glitch, lads,’ attitude this time, will you? Now we’ll turn the mike on and do it for real.”

  The man leaned into the microphone and spoke.

  “Heads up, lads. Bit of a cock-up here with the electrical system as you’ve no doubt noticed. Some sort of a short between your stations and the main circuit breakers. I’ve already alerted Engineering staff and a team of electricians are on their way to restore power. They’ll need to check the connections inside each of your stations. We shouldn’t be down for more than a few minutes, they tell me. No worries, lads. Everyone read me loud and clear?”

  The ten officers could be heard over the speaker system, all responding in the affirmative. Smith switched the microphone off.

  “Now, John, I want you to shut down the officers’ interstation communications. Cellular has already been jammed; I can’t have them talking to each other. As soon as those boys have shut this compound down, we’ll move on to Colonel Zazi and Phase Two. In an hour or so. As General Singh will inform you, John, you still have a role to play. That’s why you’re still alive.”

  “Bugger it,” the man murmured. His mind was racing in all directions, searching for a way to save his beloved Queen. But every thought was a dead end.

  “Colonel Zazi, your men are fully briefed and ready to go?”

  “Indeed. We only await your orders.”

  “Good. Have them use this time for a final weapons check.”

  From this moment forward, Hurri Singh would take over here in the command and control post and the ten stations soon under his control. The ten men who’d been sent out on the grounds to neutralize the Balmoral Security team had been trained to replace the dead guards at their individual stations. All of the cameras and sensors would then be restored to full power. Balmoral would once more become impenetrable, but the fox was now guarding the henhouse.

  CONGREVE WAS AGOG. HERE HE was, at Balmoral Castle of all places, standing around in a kilt (first time ever in a bloody skirt, he believed) and HRH, the Duke of Edinburgh, was about to tell him and his fiancée, Lady Diana Mars…a joke.

  “Are you quite sure you haven’t heard this?” HRH asked them both, lowering his voice and leaning toward them conspiratorially.

  “Quite sure, sir,” Diana said, cool as the proverbial cucumber. “Please. Do go on.”

  “Well,” Prince Philip said, lowering his voice, “as I was saying, this chap from Chilton had won the Lotto, a billion pounds for life or something, and this other chap, his mate, says to him, ‘Wotsit, Harry? You have a fairy godmother in your family?’ And Harry looks at him and says, ‘No. But we do have an uncle we keep a pretty close eye on!’”

  Congreve, who had not expected to laugh, chuckled so forcefully he spilled a drop or two of champagne on the tartan carpeting. Diana, bless her soul, tittered marvelously and smiled at the Duke with something akin to, if not precisely flirtation, then something close to it.

  “Lovely to have you both here at Balmoral, Chief Inspector, Lady Mars,” he said, before moving on to other, perhaps more fertile valleys. There were some lovely swans about this evening and he quite enjoyed their company.

  “Got off quite a good one, HRH did, didn’t you think?” Diana asked Ambrose.

  “Yes, yes, dear, very good indeed,” he replied, looking around the room. All the bejeweled ladies were in splendid evening gowns, and all the gents were decked out in kilts and sporrans, the full regalia. It was called “Scottish Black Tie” and worn in honor of the Glorious Twelfth.

  Congreve surveyed the company, secretly pleased to find himself in such esteemed society. An abundance of famous faces, anyway, some more esteemed than others. He was delighted to see the Queen over in the corner beside a grand piano covered with silver-framed photographs. She was wearing a deep blue silk suit with an astounding diamond brooch at her shoulder. And she was sipping her drink, which gossip had it, was always gin and Dubonnet. She was lovely in person, Ambrose thought, her eyes alight, smiling as she conversed with those around her, always paying strict attention to whatever was being said to her. That alone put her on a pinnacle in Congreve’s estimation.

  When Diana had told him about the invitation to Scotland, he was taken aback. Not that he and Prince Charles hadn’t gotten on awfully well at Highgrove, garden chat, dahlias, and all that, but still. A weekend at Balmoral? Heady stuff. “Seems that Charles and I hit it off quite well at Highgrove, Diana,” Ambrose had said, a bit puffed up.

  “It’s not Charles who invited us, silly,” she said. “Camilla and I are first cousins. Didn’t I ever mention that to you at all?”

  “Not really, dear, no.”

  “Oh, look, darling! There’s Charles over there by the fire. So sweet, laughing with his two boys. I must say he looks very happy. And Wills and Harry. Aren’t they handsome, darling? Not hard to see why all the girls are gaga over them, is it?”

  At any rate, here they were. Alex Hawke was supposed to be here as well, but he’d been tied up in northern Pakistan a few extra days. He had been interrogating prisoners captured when he’d managed to find and disarm the missing nuclear device stolen from the Islamabad arsenal. He was currently on an RAF command bomber, headed home, but probably would not make the weekend.

  As it was, Ambrose hardly knew a soul. He estimated about thirty guests for dinner. Mostly Royals, whom Diana knew, shooting friends of Charles’s like Montague Thorne, a charming fellow whom he’d met and thoroughly enjoyed at Highgrove, plus lots of ministers of this and that up from London, including his good friend, C, Sir David Trulove, and Lord Malmsey of MI5. Earlier, Ambrose and Trulove had cornered Lord Malmsey and given him a detailed but enhanced account of their daring raid on the Rastafarian stronghold on Nonsuch Island in Bermuda. Suitably impressed, Ambrose thought he was, too.

  At precisely eight, a Scottish piper in full fig appeared in the reception room, his plaintive tune announcing that dinner was served. Ambrose took Diana’s hand, noticing with some pride his mother’s diamond sparkling on her finger, and they made their way to the dining room.

  The Queen’s love of all things Scottish was evident everywhere. The table was splendidly set, of course, a very long stretch of mahogany, beneath high ceilings with classic molding, vivid tartan draperies on the tall bay windows, red leather dining chairs, and massive gilt-framed Highland landscapes by Landseer on the walls and above the hearth where a fire was roaring against the evening chill.

  The Queen herself was seated at the far end of the table to Congreve’s right. To his left, Prince Philip was holding court at the other end, with his grandsons nearby on either side. Diana had been seated next to Prince Charles near the middle of the table. It was odd, but Congreve found he simply could not take his eyes off the Queen. He’d found Her Majesty very dear, in fact, as kind a person as one could imagine. He’d even managed to have a bit of surprising conversation with her when he’d been presented in the receiving line earlier.

  “You’re retired, I understand, Chief Inspector,” Queen Elizabeth had said after he’d shaken her hand and bowed politely.

  “I am, ma’am,” he’d replied, stunned that she knew anything at all about him.

  “How are you finding it?”

  “Well, ma’am, people are still shooting at me.”

  “Are they really? One must always remember to duck, mustn’t one?”

  AMBROSE CONGREVE WAS ABOUT TO TUCK into his first taste of the celebrated hagg
is (a near-mythical Scottish dish that was definitely an acquired taste) when the bustling and festive dining room was suddenly plunged into utter and complete darkness.

  All the lights went out at once, and not just those in the dining room, it appeared, but the pantry, the adjacent drawing room, everywhere. It was as if someone had just pulled the plug on the entirety of Balmoral Castle.

  “Stay calm, everyone,” a heavily accented but authoritative male voice announced, and indeed everyone was. There was the usual twittering and titter of nervous laughter that accompanies such incidents. Ambrose heard and felt the presence of men moving quickly toward the right end of the table and assumed they were house detectives moving to protect Her Royal Majesty.

  The lights flickered once or twice and then came back on. It was as if they’d all gone to sleep to awaken in another world.

  In that moment or two it took for the guests’ eyes to reacquaint themselves with light, someone, a woman, screamed in horror at the top of her lungs.

  There was a large, bearded man standing beside the Queen, and he had a pistol to her head.

  The Queen had gone rigid, clearly in a state of shock, staring straight ahead, her hands clasped resolutely in her lap. Congreve worried that this desperate situation could easily trigger a heart attack in an eighty-five-year-old woman, especially one who had suffered much heartache here at the end of her long life.

  Up and down the table, heads swiveled in shock and there were more shouts of alarm as the reality of what was happening hit the guests full-on, like some nightmarish force of nature.

  Armed men now stood in every doorway of the room. And more were entering every second. They arrayed themselves around the table, waving the muzzles of their heavy black machine guns at the seated guests, shouting at everyone to stay seated and be quiet.

  The heavily bearded man threatening the Queen slammed his huge fist down on the table, causing all the china and crystal to jump and shatter, glasses breaking, red wine spreading like so much spilt blood across the pure white field of linen stretching out before Her Majesty.

  “Quiet!” the large man roared at them. “You will be quiet! Now!”

  The screaming subsided to be replaced by quiet sobbing as the guests stared at each other and their beloved sovereign in abject horror. Many of the women held their napkins to their eyes, unable to look at the terrifying scene that confronted them. Many husbands put their arms around their wives, whispering reassuring words in their ears.

  “I am Colonel Zazi,” the big man said, speaking in a surprisingly clipped British accent. “I am a warrior in the great jihadi army known throughout the world as the Sword of Allah. As of this moment, my men have seized complete control of this castle and the surrounding grounds. This is a fait accompli. No one is coming to save you. They are all dead. They are all—”

  “You bloody barbarians are stark raving mad!”

  It was Prince Philip, struggling to rise from his chair, his face white with rage as the men to either side roughly shoved him back into his seat. His two grandsons, Wills and Harry, enraged at seeing their grandfather treated in this brutal fashion, started to rise, but their father, Charles, called their names and shook his head, urging them to sit and be calm.

  “I shall make an announcement,” the big man said, when the rage subsided a bit. “You people seated at this table are, as of this moment, political prisoners of the Sword of Allah. And shall remain so until, and if, our demands are met. But there are members of this household in whom we have no strategic interest. The staff, housekeeping, the secretaries, the kitchen—you, in the green jacket by the fire—what is your name?”

  “Higgins, sir.”

  “What do you do here, Higgins?”

  “I have the honor to be one of Her Majesty’s footmen, sir.”

  “Can you cook?”

  “A little, sir.”

  “You now have the honor of working for me. These people are going to need food and drink for a few days. See that they get it.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “Higgins, you have exactly ten minutes to inform all the household staff members that they are free to leave by the main entrance to the grounds. Those you tell should tell as many of the others as they can find. Go now. Tell them that my men have orders to shoot anyone who remains inside these walls ten minutes from now. Do you understand?”

  “I do, sir, yes.”

  “I suggest you hurry along, Higgins. Get while the getting is good, as they say.”

  Higgins fled, first into the kitchen, where horrified staff peered out from behind half-closed doors. Ambrose could hear him shouting at them, urging them to race throughout the castle, find everyone they could, and get them all out at once.

  “Now then,” Zazi said, removing his 9mm pistol from the Queen of England’s temple and slipping it into a black nylon holster on his right hip. Congreve noticed that on his other hip he wore a battle sword in a scabbard. It did not reassure him. “We are going to move you to another location. I strongly suggest you do this in an orderly fashion and in complete silence. If any one of my men gives you an order, follow it immediately. Understood? On your feet. Form a single line at the door to the right at the far end of the dining room. Then we will proceed.”

  Ambrose reached under the table and took Diana’s hand, squeezing it gently in reassurance. He leaned over and kissed a shining spot on her cheek where a tear had been. When he looked up at her face, he saw that she was crying softly, but she smiled at him through her tears and he knew that she would have the strength to get through this nightmare.

  At this point, it was all he dared hope for.

  SIXTY-TWO

  THINGS WERE GOING HELLWARD FAST. Descending the curving stone steps down into the castle’s dank cellar was unnerving at best. It was as dark and cold as a crypt despite the season. All Congreve could think of was the fate of the Romanovs, the Royal Family of Russia. Tsar Nicholas, his wife, Alexandra, and their young children.

  In the summer of 1918, after suffering house arrest at Ekateringburg for months, they were herded down to the basement in the middle of the night. Twelve Red Army soldiers entered with rifles and murdered the whole family in cold blood. The young princesses, whose nurses had sewn the crown jewels of Russia into their blouses, had to be finished off with bayonets. The bullets had ricocheted off the gemstones.

  In the long Balmoral hallways that the forlorn and terrified hostages had traversed en route to the cellar entrance, they’d seen the splayed bodies of several Special Branch bodyguards and detectives, their throats slashed from ear to ear before they could even fire a warning shot. The jihadists had simply swarmed inside and overwhelmed them.

  Congreve wondered how the terrorists had made it past the castle entrance until he saw the body of his old Scotland Yard colleague John Iverson sprawled in the entrance hall. John had for years been chief of security here at Balmoral. Clearly Iverson had been forced to trick the SO15 men on the door into opening it.

  The terrorists, all little more than boys with beards and guns, kept shouting and prodding them along with their weapons, heedless of how difficult it was to keep one’s footing on the worn stone, especially in the semi-darkness. Ambrose kept one steady hand on Diana’s shoulder as she preceded him downward. From time to time, she would reach up and cover his hand with hers. It helped both of them.

  They both assumed they were all going to die; he believed most of the guests felt the same way. But Congreve knew this was still purely a fluid hostage situation, in other words, a negotiation. And that this high-stakes drama had a long way to go until the final curtain.

  It would certainly not be pleasant. But if they had a little luck, they all might just survive. The British Army, the Special Air Service (SAS), and the legions of counterterrorist operatives at both MI5 and MI6 would not look fondly upon the Monarch and Britain’s Royal Family being held captive in a basement.

  The cellar itself was an enormous warren of rooms and alcoves, filled to ove
rflowing with the detritus of centuries. Furniture, primarily, but also art, bicycles, and baby prams from another era; there were endless shelves of old books, towers of Persian rugs that reached the ceiling, a lot of it the former property of Queen Victoria.

  A vaulted hallway finally opened up into a cavernous room that appeared to be inhabited by ghosts. Sheets covered retired Victorian furniture of every possible description, sofas, chaises, deep armchairs, and ornate gilded side chairs. A dim, misty light from exposed bulbs mounted in ceiling sockets provided the sole illumination, and it was hardly cheery.

  Zazi informed them that this room would be their new home for the foreseeable future and that they should make themselves comfortable on any of the furniture they found suitable. His hostility seemed to have diminished now that they had descended three flights of steps and entered a closed environment in which he had far more control. With himself and the armed men keeping watch over the hostages, he didn’t anticipate too many problems maintaining order.

  Once everyone had ripped away the sheets and settled into the furniture of their choice, two of the young fighters began distributing large plastic bottles of Highland Springs water, a gesture most took to be grounds for optimism. The Royal Family was seated apart from the guests, in a small alcove off the main room. Charles and his two sons moved furniture around, making sure everyone was as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

  Ambrose could see the Queen from where he and Diana were seated on a deep-cushioned velvet sofa. Her majesty was seated on a large silk brocade settee next to the Duke of Edinburgh. Surprisingly, Zazi had allowed her beloved Welsh Corgis to accompany her and they lay quietly at her feet. Her composed face and posture in this calamitous moment could only be described as stoic, if not serene.

  Her uncanny ability to rise above this situation only confirmed Ambrose Congreve’s long-held belief that it was her poise, her selflessness, her personal courage, and her enormous strength of character and dignity that had enabled her to lead her country so nobly for nearly sixty years. She had, in fact, become a British institution, and the reason was never more apparent than now.