by RR Haywood
He nods again, another order given, and she stands almost to attention, grips the bottom of her sports bra and tugs it up to show her breasts. He gasps with lust and steps closer, a fumbling glove-covered hand reaching out to grab and squeeze. She glares at him, unmoving, unflinching, uncowering.
The rapid-response fighter planes, as fast, as modern, as agile and as capable as they are, cannot bend time and space and still have to rely on human beings running from mess rooms to climb into cockpits that have to be sealed while they press physical buttons and prepare for take-off. It takes only a moment but every second delayed sees the incoming jet holding that flight path as the pilot scans the ground ahead for the target premises.
It is timed perfectly and the unmarked white vans nearby are parked in the darkness while the men within clutch their assault rifles to their chests. It has been two years in the planning and is the most sophisticated attack ever to strike at the heart of British politics.
What the report will not reveal is that at the time of the attack, the Prime Minister was in his private study of his private apartment drunk on whisky while sexually assaulting the armed female police officer assigned to protect his life. His right hand pumping and his left hand squeezing while his eyes dropped down to the belt on her waist.
The pilot gains visual sight. The laser system activates. The order is given for her trousers to be pulled down. The men in the vans tense. The pilot locks on. Her hands move to her belt as the realisation of the situation worsens. The laser holds steady. The thumb presses on the fire button, releasing the lock, which fires the ignition on the missile, which blasts away from the jet to roar across the sky. Every alarm in Downing Street screams out as the attack is finally realised. Drunk on lust, the Prime Minister’s eyes stay fixed on her hands gripping the clasp of her utility belt.
The piercing whine reaches her ears. Every second of training kicks in as she lunges forward, taking him to the floor to cover him with her own body as the missile strikes the wall just above the front door. Eviscerating the guard standing outside. The night-turn press pack are blasted apart and reduced to molecular form.
She holds him down amidst the rumble of the house. A booming explosion rips the air apart. Everything shaking and vibrating and the Prime Minister screaming in fear as Safa glares round at the pictures falling from the walls and the tables juddering across the floor. Her earpiece fills with voices that go unheard from the noise of the screams and the fireball ripping through the ground floor. On her feet, she grabs his arm, heaving him up and forcing him bodily across to the front door of the apartment. Pistol out. She leans into the corridor, checking the view before forcing the cowering politician down the corridor to the stairwell door.
A hole in the front wall. The door is gone. The windows obliterated with smoke billowing out and flames licking high. The plane has already gone, screaming away into the night as two RAF jets thunder overhead giving chase and already locking on to the aircraft and the pilot giving prayer inside.
The vans start with powerful engines roaring to life. The lead van goes first, building speed with the others. A reinforced chassis with oversized bull bars on the front. The driver grips the wheel behind the bulletproof glass that is peppered with shots from the single surviving officer at the main gate. Her colleague lies dead with his skull fractured from the house brick sent sailing through the air from the missile strike.
The van hits the gate. The second van hits the first and together they power forward while the men inside cling to the grab handles welded to the ceilings. The gates give way, screaming in agony from the twisted metal forced apart. The engines of the vans rising in pitch and the gates give enough for the driver of the first van to give an order. Both vans reverse and the doors slam open to black-clothed figures wearing respirators dropping down to run sprinting through the gap formed in the gates with weapons already up and aiming.
At the top of the stairwell, Safa holds position, listening intently to the orders on the radio squawking in her ear. The systems are failing. Officers are dead but more are on their way. She listens to Pilkington clambering through the debris of the main corridor on the ground floor telling everyone the front wall is breached and giving calm updates as he fires one-handed at the incoming figures, who slay him on the spot with the distinct clatter of assault rifles.
The Prime Minister whimpers, cowering on the ground behind her with his lust as forgotten as his now flaccid penis still hanging free of his trousers as Safa takes advantage of the wait for orders to do her shirt buttons up.
‘Safa . . . BASEMENT.’
‘On it,’ she replies, thumbing the press-to-talk button. ‘On your feet now.’ She grabs the politician by the arm, heaving him to his feet. ‘Down to the basement.’
He whimpers, crying like a child as she harries him down the flights of stairs, working to get ahead of him as they pass the doors to the middle floor. Smoke thick in the air, chemicals too. Fires burning. Gunshots. Heavy-calibre assault rifles and suddenly the nine-millimetre pistol in her hands feels very small. She gets him safely past the middle floor and heads down for the total security of the bunker, built to withstand a direct cruise missile strike.
On the ground floor, the black-clad figures move like professional soldiers. Two pacing forward to hold at doorways as two more sweep into the rooms, opening fire as they go and pausing only to place the explosives pulled from their tac vests. Opposition is given, with police officers firing pistols and submachine guns drawn from the armoury. One attacker is shot through the head but the officer is shredded within a split second by several assault rifles tearing him apart. The emergency lights flicker and strobe, bathing the rooms in a flashing red glow mixed with the orange of the flames still blazing at the front of the building.
In the stairwell, Safa listens to the transmissions of the other officers. The attackers are professional. They are firing burst shots and covering each other. Multiple fatalities. One attacker killed. Officers down. Officers down.
She rushes past the ground floor door knowing the control room would have initiated the locking mechanism on the stairwell doors but not knowing the figures on the other side are placing explosive charges round the frame. On the next flight down towards the bunker, she hears the sizzle before the explosion and ducks down as the door behind her blows apart. The Prime Minister screams again with his hands covering his head and sinks into the corner of the stairwell with a jet of piss squirting down his trousers.
Safa holds position, aiming with a double-handed grip and waiting for the first charging body to come through the ruined door. Firing twice and the rounds from her pistol slam the man back against the wall. She plants another shot in his head and twitches to fire at the next one rushing in. Her face a mask of focus and concentration. Two down, shot and killed outright. Voices from the corridor shouting orders in a language she does not know. A shout and an object rolls in. She grabs it quickly, throws it back and drops as the grenade detonates in the packed enclosure. An advantage taken and she presses the attack home, leaning round the ruined doorway to empty her magazine into the screaming bodies in the corridor beyond.
Counting the shots, she knows when the last bullet is fired and ducks back to eject the magazine from the grip and ram a fresh one home. Her eyes glance down at the assault rifle next to the fallen body and the second the idea forms so the weapon is grabbed. Military grade, high specification. Expensive hardware designed and built for professional soldiers. In training they teach not to use dropped weapons as you can never be sure if the weapon has been properly maintained, but right now she needs more than a nine-mill pistol can give. She checks the rifle magazine and slams it back in. She test fires once into the screaming body of a black-clad man. With the recoil and weight noted, she shoulders the weapon and runs back down the stairs, gripping the screaming Prime Minister by his hair. If the shit hits the fan it doesn’t matter how you do it but get him into that basement.
At the bottom, she shoves the Prime
Minister against the steel door of the bunker and holds position with the rifle pointing back up the stairs. A camera checks the view, the door opens to the duty military intelligence staff clutching their own sidearms. She shoves the crying man inside as the stairwell behind is sprayed with automatic fire. Turning quickly, she fires up and paces a step forward to keep the attackers suppressed. The door closes behind her with the brutality of protocol. The Prime Minister is safe. Nothing will get through that door and into the bunker. She glances back with barely a reaction showing on her face but knowing inside that the soldiers would have seen the Prime Minister crying like a baby and covered in piss with his dick hanging out. Worth it. So worth it.
She goes up, trained to defend but designed to attack. One foot after the other. Rising to meet the threat. Intense heat wafts down from the blaze burning through the house. The acrid smoke burns her eyes. She ducks down at the rounds ricocheting on the walls ahead and waits prone on the stairs for the next attacker to come into view. She fires the heavy rounds up into his stomach and chest, sending him staggering back. On her feet and she executes him with a shot to the head and tugs a magazine free from his belt to replace the one in her weapon. Up again she goes, ascending while aiming for the ground floor door of the stairwell with a decision made to hold that position until reinforcements can arrive. The radio traffic blasts through her ear. Officers still being killed and a few confirmed kills on the attackers but many more still at large.
She reaches the ruined door of the ground floor and presses her back against the wall at the same instant as two black-clothed men clutching assault rifles burst through. She drops her assault rifle and lunges between them, knowing their own forms and big guns will hamper their movement. She throat punches one and slams her elbow into the face of the other. They both stagger from the ferocity of the attack that she presses home. Grabbing the bulging section of the respirator of the closest she pulls down hard, making him bend over at the waist and using her knee to slam up into his head while forcing him round in a circle into his comrade, pressing them both into the wall.
She anticipates the moment the bent-over attacker surges up and moves round his body, getting her right arm across his throat. With a grunt she tenses and snaps viciously to the right, breaking his neck. A step away as she draws her pistol, turns and fires into the one just pushing off from the wall. He goes back from the power of the rounds slamming into his chest. She twitch aims to fire one through his head, killing him instantly. Movement in her peripheral vision. She adjusts to aim and fire into the doorway at the black-clad figure charging through.
‘REAR GARDEN,’ the sergeant’s voice screams in her ear with gunshots in the background. Safa moves out from the doorway, striding down the smoke-filled corridor, stepping on and over the bodies. ‘MULTIPLE TARGETS . . . I’M HIT . . . I’M HIT . . .’
She grabs a new magazine from a body, reloads and runs towards the firefight in the enclosed rear garden. Pistols, submachine guns and assault rifles. Grenades exploding. Flames burning. Smoke billowing. Staff dead in every doorway and room. Carmichael slumped down with the top of his head missing.
Safa pauses outside the room leading to the rear garden. Two men ahead of her kneeling in a doorway firing into the garden. Both of them dressed in black and she hesitates, not knowing if they are attackers or the first response teams. One of them turns, showing the respirator on his face. She opens fire, killing them both instantly. She holds still for a second then runs to take their position at the doorway with bullets slamming into the walls.
Chaos everywhere, people screaming in pain, bloodstains on the ground and smeared up the walls. The cacophony of noise drowns out the rushed words coming over the radio. She aims into the garden, scanning left and right as her eyes work to adjust from the red flashing lights within to the darkness outside.
‘Safa?’ She turns quickly to see two uniformed police officers running towards her but recognising neither of them. Both of them with bruised faces and one has a thin strip of white material across his recently broken nose.
‘GET DOWN,’ she shouts, waving for them to take cover.
‘Safa Patel?’ one of them asks, dropping to his knees beside the door.
‘Which division?’ she barks at them, noticing neither of them are armed and turning back to face the garden. She locks aim on a black-clothed figure running a few metres away and guns him down as the two new officers cower back from the noise of the rifle.
‘Are you Safa Patel?’
‘Yes,’ she snaps. ‘Which division are you from? Shit . . .’ She flinches at the rounds slamming into the wall and frame. She fires back but the weight of the attack coming at her is too great. The attackers are too many and advancing while throwing grenades and firing with controlled bursts.
‘GO BACK,’ she shouts at the two unarmed officers. ‘GET OUT . . .’
They are winning. Christ, the attackers are winning. Her heart sinks at the sight of them. So many left and still they fire, killing anything that opposes them. Gunfire behind her at the front of the house and more attackers shooting towards the gate and the officers trying to get inside the street. Trapped. No way out. The Prime Minister is safe in the bunker below but anyone left up here is dead.
‘Go up the stairwell and into the lift,’ she says to the two men, not thinking where they came from or how they got into the house. She grabs another magazine from one of the bodies. ‘Stop it between floors . . . they’ll never get you there . . . Go,’ she spits when they don’t move.
‘Okay,’ the police officer with the white strip across his nose says with a glance to the other one. ‘Er . . . you going to be okay here?’ He edges closer as though trying to peer through the door.
‘Just bloody go,’ she shouts. ‘Now . . . go . . . they’re coming . . .’
‘Sorry.’ The man whips an arm out, jabbing a needle into her neck before pulling her down. ‘Now, Konrad,’ he shouts.
The other man nods, pulling an object from his pocket. He yanks a pin out and throws it through the doorway, a split second later the flash-bang explodes with a sustained burning phosphorous light, blinding everyone in the garden. Safa fights to free herself, kicking and bucking, but the man is heavy.
‘Stay calm, Safa,’ Malcolm urges. ‘Please, we’re here to help.’
‘Fuck off.’ She fights to tug her pistol free but finds a hand gripping her wrist so headbutts up instead and slams into his already broken nose, which bursts apart with a shower of blood.
‘My bloody nose!’ Malcolm cries out as hard fists start raining punches into the sides and back of his head. ‘Bloody hell, she hits hard . . .’
The spreading warmth permeates through her body from the neck to the shoulders and down her arms and torso and into her legs. She feels herself slowing but fights it, hitting, kicking, punching, biting, gouging, and all the time trying to get her pistol free.
‘This is worse than Ben,’ Malcolm sobs as he takes another beating.
‘They’re coming back,’ Konrad shouts, throwing another flash-bang into the garden. ‘Don’t look outside, Malc.’
‘Eh? OH MY GOD THAT’S SO BRIGHT.’
‘I said don’t look outside.’
‘I can’t see a sodding thing,’ Malcolm bleats.
‘You bloody idiot,’ Konrad groans.
‘Jab her again,’ Malcolm shouts as his head gets another hard punch. ‘She’s taking longer than Ben . . .’
‘You can fuck off, Malc, if you think I’m going near her.’
‘Just bloody jab her . . .’
Safa bucks and writhes but the drug is strong and the adrenaline released soon pumps it round her body that starts to sag and soften as the blows become ineffective.
‘Oh thank God,’ Malcolm says as the woman underneath him starts going limp. ‘Drag her, quickly . . .’
‘I’d love to,’ Konrad hisses, ‘but your fat arse is on top of her.’
‘I’m bloody blind,’ Malcolm points out.
�
��Whose fault is that? I said don’t look outside . . . I said that . . . I said don’t look outside . . .’
‘Just get her up before they blow the house,’ Malcolm says, rolling off Safa. ‘How long have we got?’
‘Less than a minute,’ Konrad says then yelps and ducks as the room is sprayed with bullets. ‘STOP IT YOU BASTARDS,’ Konrad shouts and chucks another flash-bang into the garden, which explodes with phosphorous light blazing into the air. ‘Been beaten up and got bloody freezing in NORWAY AND NOW YOU’RE SHOOTING AT US . . .’
‘Konrad, that’s not helping, is it?’ Malcolm says, trying to squint through eyes still hurting from the flash-bang.
‘Made me feel better,’ Konrad mutters. ‘Right, come on then . . .’
‘That would be fine if I could actually see anything . . . and my nose is broken again . . .’
‘God, you whine so much!’
The last sensation Safa feels is being dragged by two men bickering. She tries to open her eyes and gains a fraction of a view that is filled with blue light before the drugs take hold and she sinks down into oblivion.
The black-clad figures press the attack home, running in to find no one there. An order given and as one they run to the front and clamber through the debris into the street, running towards the gate and the firefight taking place. With greater numbers and higher-powered weapons they force the newly arrived police officers at the gate to fall back and once a safe distance has been gained a button on a device is pressed and the terraced house above the bunker holding the Prime Minister detonates, torn apart by the combined explosive forces of the charges set within. Every corpse inside the house is obliterated. Walls are blown out and floors collapse as the fireball spreads down the street giving day to night while the Prime Minister whimpers in his bunker covered in his own piss, surrounded by military personnel wondering if they should tell him his dick is out.