by Dc Alden
They’d waited in virtual silence until, a few moments earlier, the Dark Eagle received an encrypted move order. The package was in the immediate area and en route. About bloody time, breathed Lucas, starting his pre-flight checks. He keyed the transmit switch of his microphone, ordering his co-pilot back to the helicopter and instructing his Flight-Sergeant to hold position at the staff entrance to await the arrival of their passenger. A moment later, the co-pilot climbed into the aircraft and Lucas glanced over his shoulder towards the sky in the east. Whoever it was had better hurry; they had less than an hour of darkness left.
As Gibson took cover beneath a towering oak, watching the Prime Minster puffing towards him, he fretted about what lay ahead. The good news was they had transport. On the roof of a nearby department store lay their salvation: a helicopter. But before they broke out the champagne, they had to cross two hundred yards of open parkland, a main arterial road that may or may not have enemy traffic operating on it, then get up onto the roof of the building in question using the staff entrance that was located on a road they couldn’t see and didn’t have time to recce. Still, it was their best chance of getting out of the city.
Gibson grabbed the sleeve of Harry’s jacket as he ducked under the low-hanging branches and pulled him behind the thick trunk. He gestured to Farrell.
‘You first. Call us when you’re across the street.’
Farrell nodded and took off across the park. They watched him until he was lost in the gloom. Gibson scanned the area around them. The overhead canopy made it hard to see, so he moved out from under the tree’s leafy skirt and crouched down on the damp grass, looking to the east. The black horizon was being quickly replaced by varying shades of deep blue and-Oh shit!
He ducked back under the canopy and dragged Harry to his feet. ‘Military convoy! Let’s go!’ As he ran he shouted into his radio. ‘Stevie, convoy approaching from the east. How’s our route looking?’ Farrell’s voice hissed in his ear. Gibson shouted over his shoulder as Harry panted behind him. ‘We’ve got to get across the road before they reach the park.’ The Arabians must be headed towards Kensington Palace, realised Gibson.
The two men reached the black bars of Palace Gate and ran out into Kensington High Street, dodging between the scores of abandoned cars that littered the road. There didn’t seem to be much damage here, although there were one or two bodies lying on the opposite pavement, and it seemed that nearly every shop window had been smashed. Glass crunched underfoot with every step.
Gibson dragged Harry towards the dark mass of the Barkers building. Behind him, he could hear the increasing roar of vehicle engines on the pre-dawn air.
‘Where are you, Stevie?’ he hissed into his radio. Across the road, a red-filtered torchlight blinked out of the dark shadows of a store front. Gibson shoved Harry forward. ‘Run towards the light. Quickly!’
Gibson pushed him forward and turned back towards the oncoming headlights, whose high beams suddenly washed over the road. He ducked into a shop doorway and watched as the trucks roared closer. Just when he thought that they would bypass the park, the leading armoured vehicle turned sharply to the right and crashed through the iron gates, knocking them both to the ground with an ear-splitting clang.
The vehicle continued on without stopping, accelerating up the wide Broadwalk path to the Palace itself. Gibson counted a total of four trucks, three APCs and two Humvee jeeps, all loaded with troops. The rear vehicle, an armoured type with a wicked-looking cannon mounted on its turret, screeched to a halt at the gates and took up position covering the road.
Gibson’s heart sank. He was roughly a hundred yards away from the nearest Arabian vehicle, but it was at least another hundred to the corner of the Barkers building and, for some of it, he would be exposed. He looked eastwards along Kensington Gore. Another convoy was on its way. The Arabians were throwing everything at finding them now. Gibson watched the dismounting Arabian troops carefully, waiting for the right moment to make his move.
General Al-Bitruji took the message slip from his communications officer and considered his next move. Whatever it was, it had better be quick. And decisive. Mousa was busy studying the command screen as various units raced into Kensington Gardens. He had no idea that one of Al-Bitruji’s loyal communications officers was filtering communications from Major Karroubi, that his precious paratroopers had discovered that the tunnel was a dead end, or that there could be no platform beneath Kensington Palace. Below ground, his crippled lackey was desperately trying to raise Mousa and tell him the news, but Al-Bitruji’s man was steadfastly blocking direct transmissions. A message would be passed, the exasperated Karroubi was informed.
Al-Bitruji watched carefully as the minutes ticked by. With each passing second the British Prime Minister was getting further away. It was clear Mousa was starting to sweat and Al-Bitruji was enjoying every moment. He saw Mousa’s hand go up to his ear. Perhaps he had finally heard something on the command net, something that may suggest that there was a communication problem? It wouldn’t do to overplay his hand. It was time to act.
Al-Bitruji stepped forward, the message slip in his hand and a blank look on his face. ‘I have a communication from your man in the tunnels.’
Mousa snatched the note and quickly scanned the message. ‘When did you receive this?’ he barked.
‘A moment ago.’
Mousa keyed his radio repeatedly but to no effect. He wrenched the device from his tunic and hurled it against the wall, smashing it into pieces. He turned to Al-Bitruji.
‘Get me Major Karroubi on the line this instant, or else I will have every man in this room shot.’
Al-Bitruji turned away and repeated the order. He found another radio and gave it to Mousa. The General was quickly patched through to his subordinate.
‘Karroubi, where the devil are you?’ Mousa was silent as he listened to Karroubi’s report. ‘Start searching the park,’ he ordered. ‘They must be close.’ Al-Bitruji watched Mousa break the connection and walk away. Maybe he was mistaken, but he thought he heard a slight trace of panic in the General’s voice.
Farrell led the way, Harry scuttling behind him. When they arrived at the junction of Young Street, Farrell stopped, peering around the side of the building. With a whisper he ordered Harry to hold his position, then ducked into the side street.
Harry watched him as he disappeared into the darkness beneath the wide canopy of Barkers. He experienced a momentary feeling of panic, his armed escort gone, abandoning him to the dark and dangerous streets of West London. He was scared, of course he was, but his fear was tempered by the thoughts of others out there, the old and the very young, trapped in their homes or caught out on the streets amongst the carnage. Many would be injured, some dying, alone, in the dark. Harry had a chance of escape, whereas the public were at the mercy of the gods. Shame suffocated his fear, but there was nothing he could do until he got to Alternate One. That had to be his priority now.
A movement caught his eye and he saw Farrell race back across the street towards him. He reached Harry and pointed back over his shoulder.
‘Other side of the road, fifty yards, a set of glass doors. There’s a Flight
Sergeant on the other side. He’ll take you up to the roof to the chopper.’ Harry’s shoulders sagged in relief. ‘Thank God,’ he whispered.
‘Let’s save the prayers until we’re away. Mike’s got bad guys right on his arse. I’ll see if he needs a hand.’
As the soldier turned to leave, Harry gripped his arm. ‘Hurry back, both of you. I’m not leaving you behind.’ He ran across the street as quickly as he could. One of the glass doors swung inwards as he approached. Behind it waited a man in a flight helmet and black jumpsuit. He also carried an automatic rifle.
‘Flight-Sergeant Hopkins, Sir. Follow me.’
Without waiting, Hopkins turned and made for the stairs with Harry close behind.
With practised rhythm, Flight Lieutenant Lucas brought the Dark Eagle’s systems on li
ne. Next to him, his co-pilot had strapped in and was going through the same pre-flight checks. They both had hundreds of hours in the Dark Eagle, but they always carried out the checks as if it were their maiden flight. Both men were satisfied to see the status board indicate a solid block of green lights. They were ready.
Lucas reached overhead and depressed another set of switches to engage the main rotor, twisting the power grip on his collective to bring the rotor speed up. A quick scan of his instruments told him that all systems were fully operational and the aircraft was prepared for flight. In fact, he could feel the Dark Eagle just itching to leap into the sky. All he needed now were his passengers. He saw the nearby fire escape door swing open and Hopkins appeared, dragging a sorry-looking figure behind him. He nudged his co-pilot and nodded. The Prime Minister was alive.
Harry gasped for breath as he staggered out onto the roof. A blast of rotor wash assaulted him, plastering the clothes against his body, and he bent forward against the wind. The strange thing was he could hardly hear the black, angular helicopter that vibrated impatiently in front of him. It was so quiet, just a low, whupping noise, like a chopper heard from some distance away. The side door slid back and, with a firm hand from Hopkins, Harry was seated on a bench behind the pilots and securely strapped in. He took the proffered headset and the pilot’s voice hissed in his ears.
‘Glad to see you made it, Prime Minister. My name is Flight Lieutenant Lucas and this is my co-pilot, Flying Officer Stanton. As soon as your military escort arrives we’ll get airborne.’
Harry nodded, still fighting to regain his breath. ‘How long have you been here?’ he eventually gasped.
‘Long enough.’
He saw Lucas glance at his watch, then both pilots shared a look. ‘We don’t leave without them,’ Harry said into his microphone. ‘If they stay, I stay.’
Lucas swivelled in his seat. ‘Prime Minister, my orders are-’
‘Screw your orders. We wait.’
Lucas shook his head. ‘Three minutes, Sir, that’s all I can give you. We can’t take the risk, not now you’re on board.’
Harry nodded grimly. Come on, Mike. Where the bloody hell are you?
Gibson crawled over glass and debris as he inched his way across the road. At least a couple of dozen Arabians were milling around the entrance to the park. A few luminous sticks were cracked and thrown on the ground to mark the entrance, but soon that wouldn’t be necessary. In a while it would be light enough to see without artificial aids. If Gibson stood now, he’d probably be spotted. He could continue crawling, using the cars as cover, but it was taking too long. Farrell’s urgent voice hissed in his earpiece.
‘The chopper can’t wait. You’ve got to move now.’
Gibson considered ordering Farrell to leave him behind. If the chopper waited, then he was effectively compromising the mission and Gibson had never done that in his professional life. He also knew the helicopter was his only real hope of getting out of the city before daybreak, otherwise he might never get out. But the mission was paramount. Evacuate the Prime Minister to Alternate One.
He was about to reach for his radio when a new voice sounded in his earpiece, a distinctive voice he’d heard a hundred times on the TV.
‘Mike, this is Harry. You need to get back here as soon as you can. Our pilots are eager to leave, but I’ve told them we can’t go without you. Do you understand?’
Gibson thought for a moment, then quickly made his decision. He keyed his radio. ‘Go now,’ he whispered. ‘I appreciate what you’re saying, but I won’t make it. I’ll hole up for a few days somewhere, find another way out. But you need to go now. I’m sorry, Sir.’
On the roof, Harry nodded to the pilot. With seemingly no effort, the Dark Eagle lifted off the roof and nosed out above the street below. It swivelled under its own rotors until it faced east towards Kensington Gardens. Lucas interrogated his Low-Light Head Up Display built into his helmet visor. Below them, he could see the ghostly images of two trucks, the armoured vehicle and a couple of dozen Arabian soldiers spread out around the entrance to the park. The Dark Eagle’s thermal imaging cameras also picked out the ghostly silhouette of Mike Gibson, lying prone behind an abandoned vehicle not fifty yards from the nearest Arabian truck. With a series of voice commands, Lucas alerted his weapons systems to immediate action.
‘WepsComp, activate.’ The targeting radar built into the nose cone of the Dark Eagle interrogated the ground below. It painted the vehicles and troops below with a single emission sweep, uploaded the information into the weapons system computer and waited for its next command. Lucas glanced at the targeting receptacle that floated over each target.
‘Switch target, switch target, target selected. Switch target, target selected.’ In less than seven seconds Lucas had targeted the armoured vehicle and both trucks with three forty-millimetre rockets each and a group of Arabian soldiers with a two-second burst of twenty millimetre cannon. ‘Prepare to fire.’
Lucas turned to Harry and gave him a thumbs up. Harry keyed his own radio. ‘Gentlemen, we’re right above you. Keep your heads down and, when the shooting starts, get up on the roof as quickly as you can.’
On the ground, Farrell ducked back into Young Street and Gibson curled up tight under the abandoned vehicle. They both realised what was coming.
‘Fire, fire, fire!’
On the push of a button, nine forty-millimetre rockets hissed from the armaments pods of the Dark Eagle and streaked towards their targets. Almost simultaneously, one hundred and thirty-three explosive twenty-millimetre cannon rounds chewed up the largest congregation of Arabian troops with a loud ripping sound, sending body parts spinning through the air. Before the survivors knew what had happened, the rockets impacted into the vehicles at the park gates and the resulting explosions lit up the early morning gloom. Each vehicle was thrown upwards in separate fireballs, their own fuel tanks erupting and adding to the inferno.
Gibson was up and running as the missiles hit and a blast of hot air washed over him. Seconds later, metal fragments and hot debris rained down around him. As he got to the corner of Young Street, he turned and looked back. A long burst of automatic fire chipped the concrete over his head and smashed windows in the Barkers building behind him. He’d been spotted, and two or three Arabians were already zigzagging through the abandoned vehicles, their silhouettes backlit by the burning vehicles. He turned and raced towards the building. Farrell was waiting, covering him as he sprinted across the side street. As he reached the entrance, Farrell opened fire over his head with a short burst.
‘They’re right on your arse! Keep going!’
Gibson charged through the open door and both men sprinted across the marble lobby towards the fire escape. Gibson ordered Farrell up the stairs and slammed the door behind him. He grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall, pulled the pins from two grenades and trapped them between the extinguisher and the door. It was a crude booby-trap, but hopefully it would slow their pursuers.
Halfway up the stairs, they heard the twin detonations of the grenades below and a high-pitched scream echoed up the stairwell. A burst of fire from below forced them against the walls as bullets ricocheted off the steel handrail, but they were nearly at the top. They crashed through the door onto the roof.
The Dark Eagle was there, hovering quietly, a crewman waving them furiously aboard. They ran for the side door and clambered over the Prime Minister, giving the thumbs-up to the pilot. Immediately, Lucas increased power, the helicopter rising like an express elevator until it was a hundred feet above street level. He spun the nose around and dipped it, turning the aircraft westwards. Within a few seconds they had accelerated to nearly one hundred and twenty miles an hour as the dark rooftops of West London flashed beneath them.
They'd cut it very fine indeed and everyone on board said a silent prayer of thanks.
The River
The Kingfisher slipped quietly along the River Thames, making steady progress westwards under th
e pale light of the moon. For the crew, the last few hours had been the most traumatic of their lives, but the low throb of the boat’s engine combined with the gentle lapping of the dark waters had helped to calm their ragged nerves. While Khan steered the boat, Alex sat perched on the bow, keeping forward watch. At the stern, Kirsty scanned the riverbanks as the Kingfisher took them further out of the city. They sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, but comforted by the fact that the immediate danger appeared to be behind them, where the sky glowed red and distant thunder rumbled ominously. Every now and then Alex turned to check on Kirsty, and when she caught his glance she smiled.
The river took them past the shadowy expanse of Kew Gardens and they drifted silently under the deserted Twickenham Bridge. Towards Richmond, the river began to narrow and Khan steered the boat midstream, warning Alex and Kirsty to watch the banks for potential trouble. Behind the ornate buildings that lined the riverbank to their left, the sky throbbed with a bright orange glow, a sign that Richmond town centre was ablaze. Burning embers danced lazily in the air and the roar of flames and the crash of collapsing timbers echoed across the rooftops. Khan teased a bit more power from the engine, leaving the depressing scene behind them.
At Glovers Island, the river turned west and then dipped south towards Kingston, where they passed under that bridge without event, chugging past Thames Ditton and moving slowly on towards Chertsey. The only life they saw were bats, flitting silently on the night air, and a family of swans and cygnets, who watched the Kingfisher warily as they drifted by.