by Dc Alden
A short while later, Alex bolted upright then made his way quickly back into the wheelhouse.
‘Could be trouble up ahead,’ he said.
‘Show me.’
Khan throttled back to a couple of knots headway and left Kirsty at the helm. Out on deck there was little to see, but Khan heard the noise too. Vehicles. Lots of them.
‘Do you know where we are?’ asked Khan.
‘Well, that was Shepperton lock back there, which means that that must be Chertsey over there.’ Alex pointed to the southwest. In the distance, they could see the dark silhouettes of low-rise buildings set against the night sky. ‘I’d imagine that’s traffic on the M3 motorway, possibly the M25. Either way, there’ll be a bridge sooner rather than later.’
‘It’s the M3,’ said Kirsty, leaning out of the wheelhouse window. Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Definitely. Chertsey lock is up ahead and directly after that is the M3 motorway bridge. I’ve checked the map.’
While Khan studied the ground ahead with binoculars, Alex joined Kirsty in the wheelhouse.
‘You read maps too,’ he smiled. ‘Smart as well as pretty.’ Kirsty didn’t reply. ‘Sorry. Just kidding.’
‘I know.’
‘You okay?’
‘I like being on the boat, that’s all. Feels safe.’
‘Once we get to Rob’s place it’ll be better, trust me.’
Khan returned to the wheelhouse. ‘It’s getting light. We’ve got to get off the river as soon as possible.’
Alex pointed through the windshield. ‘There’s a spot just ahead that’ll give us some cover.’
‘Good idea,’ Khan said. ‘Let me have the wheel.’ He spun the helm, turning the Kingfisher towards a large stand of willow trees overhanging the water on the southern bank. He cut the engine, steering the vessel silently and expertly under the drooping canopy. Out on deck, Alex used his foot to brace the boat as it bumped against the weed-covered bank, then tied the craft off around an emergency life-belt stand.
They gathered again in the wheelhouse, Khan scanning the bridge ahead with his binoculars. Through the limp curtain of willow branches he saw movement on the bridge. There were soldiers on the parapet and, behind them, the dark shapes of fast-moving traffic, rubber tyres humming noisily on the air. He watched for at least two minutes then passed the binoculars across.
‘That’s a lot of vehicles,’ noted Alex.
‘Sure is,’ agreed Khan, ‘and all headed for London. Looks like we made the right decision.’
‘Agreed. Trouble is, what do we do now?’ Alex peered into the darkness. On the shore, the open ground was dotted with oak trees, providing overhead cover for a couple of hundred yards. There were several vehicles out there in the gloom and, as his eyes gradually became accustomed to the shadows on the shore, he realised they were caravans and motor homes. They looked lifeless and deserted, shrouded in darkness.
‘Let’s keep going, by road. It’s only about thirty miles from here. I know the way.’
Kirsty frowned. ‘Really? Aren’t we safer on the boat?’
‘We can’t stay tied up here and we’ll never get under that bridge.’
‘He’s right, Kirsty. The sooner we get moving the better.’ Khan turned to Alex. ‘It means stealing a car. You okay with that?’
‘First time for everything,’ Alex smiled.
‘Good. Wait here.’
It didn’t take long to find a suitable vehicle, a powerful Range Rover parked next to a trailer home where a warm light shone behind the curtains. Khan knocked on the door and, when it opened, he pushed inside. Thirty seconds later he returned with the key. He started the vehicle up and jumped out, beckoning the others with a frantic wave. Alex was impressed until he saw two elderly, frightened faces peering at them from behind the curtains.
‘Jesus Christ, Dan. What did you do?’
‘They’re fine. Get in.’
Alex hesitated. ‘We can’t do this. Let’s find another one.’
‘There’s no time. Jump in the back. You up for driving, Kirsty?’
‘Sure.’
‘Good. Alex and I will ride shotgun.’
As they pulled away beneath the trees, Alex offered a sheepish wave to the elderly couple, then Kirsty hit the throttle, accelerating towards the main gate in a cloud of dust and gravel. She kept the lights off, carefully navigating the narrow road that twisted through the trees. They passed the park reception centre and found themselves at the junction of the main road. To their left they could see the smaller Chertsey Bridge. To the right, the road stretched away into the early-morning gloom, the emptiness almost eerie.
‘Let’s keep the lights off for a while and take it real easy,’ instructed Khan.
‘Which way to the farm?’ asked Kirsty, nervous about leaving the boat but grateful to be doing something constructive.
‘Go right,’ said Alex. ‘I’ll tell you when to turn.’
The Range Rover spun out onto the road and purred quietly along the darkened street, leaving the Kingfisher and the river behind them.
Kensington Gardens, West London
General Mousa leaned against his Humvee and surveyed the wreckage left in the wake of the Dark Eagle’s assault. As he watched, numerous vehicle fires were being noisily extinguished and the blackened and dismembered bodies of the casualties removed in rubber body bags. After a while, all that was left were four burnt-out vehicle skeletons and a slick of oil and melted tarmac across the width of Kensington High Street.
Mousa’s calm exterior belied his inner turmoil. Cursed Infidels, he raged silently. Curse them and the day their whore mothers gave birth to them. How did they slip through? And escape in a helicopter, no less. He would have to communicate with the Holy One soon. Back home it would be after sunrise, and a personal situation report was overdue. He would break the bad news in due course but, before he did so, there was still a straw to be grasped.
Major Karroubi was limping amongst the debris. Mousa beckoned him and he limped over to the Humvee.
‘I believe there is a witness to this shambles. Summon him.’
Karroubi barked an order and an Arabian survivor of the rocket attack trotted over. Mousa noticed the soldier was unharmed but terrified. He stepped forward and bowed deeply.
‘What did you see? Quickly,’ demanded Mousa.
The soldier began to recount his recent near-death experience, telling Mousa of the warm breeze that ruffled his clothing, the black shape silhouetted against the deep blue of the pre-dawn sky. As the missiles were launched and the bullet casings rained down around him, he flung himself to the ground, reluctant to move for fear of being caught in the carnage. When he looked up again, it was just in time to see the helicopter disappear back over the roof of the building across the street. He’d joined in the chase of the English soldiers, following two angry comrades down a side street and into a large department store. The grenades had killed them both. Mousa dismissed the relieved soldier with a wave of his hand.
‘They’re headed west,’ declared Mousa. ‘Ground all aircraft west of the city and divert any flights inbound for Heathrow. As of now, the whole of western England is a no-fly zone unless specifically authorised by me. And tell Air Command that I want a Big Eye in the air immediately.’
‘At once, General.’
Mousa produced a map and spread it out across the bonnet of the jeep.
‘Have a company of airborne troops loaded onto helicopters at Heathrow and ready to move on my order. I want them headed west as soon as the enemy aircraft is located. Tell Al-Bitruji to contact our forces at Southampton docks. I want the next fully-equipped mechanized battalion diverted from the coast and have the commander of that unit report to me directly when they have reached this point here.’ Mousa stabbed a thick finger on the map.
‘But that’s Salisbury,’ cautioned Karroubi. ‘If we send units west, before we’ve cleared the Hampshire gap, they could be engaged from the rear by British
forces escaping the garrisons at Tidworth and Aldershot. Forgive me for saying so, General, but these redeployments run contrary to the invasion plans.’
Mousa quickly folded the map and shoved it into the pocket of his combat trousers. ‘And like all battle plans, they tend to change as soon as the first shot is fired.’
‘But the Holy One-’
‘Let me worry about that,’ snapped Mousa. ‘Just get the forces to Salisbury and inform me when they’re in position.’
They climbed aboard the Humvee and the driver swung the vehicle around, accelerating east towards Knightsbridge. Ahead of them, the sky had taken on a pale hue as the first rays of sun breached the horizon.
Mousa settled back in his seat and considered his impending report to the Cleric. His Holiness would not be pleased, but the General hoped he could rectify the situation by capturing the Prime Minister before the day’s end.
Salisbury Plain
The Big Eye surveillance aircraft rotated off the runway at Heathrow and climbed into the dawn sky, headed due west. The flight crew had been in-country for less than two hours when the call came to scramble, but luckily the Big Eye’s specialist support team had flown ahead with their equipment and turned the plane around as soon as it landed on English soil.
Captain Ibrahim Al-Sadir pushed the throttles to their stops and gained altitude quickly. Their pre-flight mission briefing had been urgent and to the point: find a helicopter, probably of a stealth variety, headed west. Identify, track and report in. Simple. Except to find a tiny helicopter cloaked with stealth technology and hugging the ground was going to be difficult, even for the formidable electronic capabilities of the Big Eye.
Al-Sadir flexed his fingers inside his flying gloves. He’d expected to fly operations like this, but not quite so soon. The military push to the north and west of England was supposed to start after the major cities had been secured and before the enemy had a chance to muster their remaining forces; H-Hour plus seventy-two, according to the crew briefings back in Arabia. Something must have gone wrong. The helicopter they hunted was important, so important that there were other forces out there intent on its capture. Must be something big, thought Al-Sadir. Still, it was not his concern. As he levelled out at seven thousand metres, the young captain pondered the tactical advantages of his situation.
Firstly, domestic electricity supplies were still cut off, which meant electronic background noise would be minimal. The reasonably flat landscape was spread out before him under a cloudless sky as the sun rose behind the aircraft, making visibility almost perfect.
Secondly, all Arabian aircraft to the west of Heathrow had been stood down, de-cluttering the electronic picture even further and thus aiding the Big Eye in its search. Although it would only take seconds for his on-board computer systems to register friend or foe, that little processing chore had been alleviated by the lack of friendly air activity ahead of him. In fact, his systems registered zero activity on a westerly heading between his aircraft and as far as the Bristol Channel. Perfect. As an experienced pilot, Al-Sadir often had to cope with crowded airspaces, but right now he was the only aircraft in the sky and the thought pleased him greatly.
Thirdly, the absence of enemy ground radar gave Al-Sadir additional confidence. According to early reports, the British armed forces had been dealt a massive blow and had been all but neutralised by the invasion forces. Not a single co-coordinated counter-attack had materialised anywhere around the country. Of course, there had been minor skirmishes, but nothing that indicated organised and determined resistance. And the Royal Air Force, once a formidable foe, had been thoroughly neutered by the economic crisis that had plagued Europe for years. What few reports of enemy air activity they’d received indicated they were operating far to the north. It was just his aircraft and a cloudless sky. If there was a helicopter out there, he would find it. He checked the Big Eye’s position then keyed the interior comms system.
‘Confirm target area. Commence sweep.’
Behind him, in the highly sophisticated main control cabin, the Big Eye’s crew of eight technicians finished calibrating their instruments and activated numerous air and ground-search radars, some of the most technologically advanced systems in the world. Outside the aircraft, the air became ‘hot’ with microwaves as multi-layered search systems swept the airspace before them. The computers and instrumentation aboard were especially designed to filter information from the multiple radar returns and sort them into categories.
Almost immediately they received several contacts. The system identified them as either flocks of birds or similar anomalies, but the computers were programmed to ignore these potential targets and the sweep continued. The returns whittled down on the scopes. Now the remaining targets were classified as military, enemy vehicles and armour on the ground. These returns were plotted and the information sent back to the controllers at Heathrow. They would be dealt with presently.
The target that the Big Eye hunted possessed a specific electronic signature. Speed was also a factor and the computers had been programmed to ignore anything under one hundred and forty kilometres per hour. On its fifth sweep, the air-search system reported a single contact moving at nearly two hundred kilometres per hour, one hundred and seventeen kilometres ahead. The return wasn’t strong and the blip kept fading from the display, but it was a positive return and the speed, altitude, direction and lack of transponder signal were enough to confirm to the operator that the target was unfriendly.
‘Target acquired. Possible helicopter.’
In the cockpit, Al-Sadir listened to the report and checked his own display, watching the tell-tale blip fade in and out intermittently. It certainly behaved like a stealth aircraft. He banked the Big Eye over a few degrees and increased power, still heading due west. Another radar sweep and the contact firmed up. An enemy helicopter, type unknown and employing stealth technology. And it was where he’d been told to expect it, which made the contact a primary target. Time to call for some help. He radioed the Forward Air Controllers, currently operating out of the main control tower at Heathrow.
‘Ground Station Hotel, this is Bravo Echo-Niner. I have probable target acquisition. Request fighter vector.’
‘Vector approved, Bravo Echo-Niner. You have command,’ Heathrow replied. Al-Sadir then contacted the fighters, two F-22 Raptor Interceptors circling twenty-eight kilometres behind the Big Eye, and fed them the coordinates of the target track. The fighters acknowledged and turned west on full afterburner.
‘We’ve got trouble.’
Sixty-eight miles ahead of the Big Eye, above the western edge of Salisbury Plain, Flight Lieutenant Lucas swore into his microphone as the Arabian radar emissions swept over their helicopter once again. They’d been lucky so far. Since leaving London, they’d found themselves in relatively clear country and Lucas had navigated a route away from urban areas and major traffic lanes, taking them in a curving path between the M4 and M3 motorways that saw them skirt Bracknell and Reading. They had detected some feverish radar activity behind them in London as scores of air-search radars began lighting up the sky, but the Dark Eagle was too low, too stealthy and heading further away with each passing second for them to constitute a problem. In fact, it was all going rather well and Lucas had begun to relax a little. Until now.
‘They’ve got us. Positive return that time,’ observed Stanton, the co-pilot. It was the fifth emission sweep in sixty seconds. They were being hunted and the radar signature of the hunter meant that it could only be one such aircraft, an Arabian Big Eye.
‘What’s the score?’ hissed Gibson from the rear cabin.
‘We’ve been spotted by an Arabian surveillance aircraft and that means fighters. We don’t have long.’ Lucas’s trained eye took in their immediate environment. The ground beneath them was a patchwork of fields and hedges, with a small village to the north and a cluster of farm buildings to the west. Immediately ahead was a wheat field with a wooden hay barn at its southern end. Lucas banke
d the aircraft around, circling the large structure, its huge doors flung wide open. Empty. Not perfect but it would do.
‘Everybody hang on!’
Lucas pulled back on the control yoke and lifted a foot off one of the rudder pedals, stopping the helicopter in mid-air and putting it into a full one hundred and eighty degree turn. He dropped the craft seventy feet to the ground, twisting the collective back up to increase the power and soften the landing. Lowering the gear, he drove the aircraft right inside the barn and spun her around to face the doors, killing the power to the rotors. Harry winced as he watched the blades whip up a storm of broken stalks and chaff, the tips thrashing the air only a few feet from the barn walls. He stared at the back of Lucas’s head, both hugely impressed and terrified by the manoeuvre. As the rotors dipped and the turbines wound down, they heard the roar of the incoming fighters.
‘Signal’s disappeared, Captain.’
Inside the cockpit of the Big Eye, Captain Al-Sadir had also noted the loss of contact with the helicopter and scanned his electronic display. Its last known position was a mile or so south of a place called Erlestoke. No matter, the fighters were almost upon them. They would force them down and pinpoint their position, continuing to patrol the area until the helicopter assault teams could get there and capture the Infidels. Already Al-Sadir could hear the radio traffic of the helicopter pilots as they clattered off the runway at Heathrow fifty-six kilometres to the east.
Harry winced again as the distant roar increased to an ear-splitting crescendo and two fast-moving shadows suddenly carved across the wheat field in front of them. The barn shook beneath the fighters’ thunderous passage and then they were gone, the rumble echoing around the horizon. Harry’s ears rang. He looked anxiously at the back of Lucas’s green helmet.
‘Did they see us?’
‘Did you see them?’
Over his headset, the lead Raptor pilot heard the negative response of his wingman. Where the devil had they gone? The Big Eye had vectored them in to the correct coordinates and they even had the target on their scopes for a second or two, but now it had gone. Obviously the helicopter had gone to ground, but where? The pilot thought it would be difficult enough to hide a helicopter quickly in all this open countryside, particularly with a couple of supersonic fighters hard on its tail. So where the devil had they gone?