Invasion (23 page)

‘What’s the problem?’ demanded Brigadier
Forsythe
as he entered the control room, Harry following close behind.

‘Train carriage won’t move,’ Gibson replied. ‘We’ve got a green light on the panel but it’s just not moving.’

‘Keep trying.’

Through the glass wall they saw Trooper Farrell
running towards them
.

‘We’ve
got movement
in the basement corridor,’ he panted
. ‘Someone’s trying to get access to the generator room.’

‘Could it be civilians? Stragglers maybe?’ offered Harry. He was horrified at the thought that there may be people trapped below Downing Street with all that destruction raging above them.

Forsythe shook his head. ‘Doubtful. No one knows about the tunnel system apart from a very small group of people with the highest clearance.’

‘Well, maybe
it’s one of them?’

‘There’s one way of finding out.’

Forsythe flipped the power on a monitor built into the control desk. Harry and the soldiers gathered around the screen, which was split into numerous smaller images transmitted from the underground cavern and its tunnels.

‘This complex and parts of the tunnel system are covered by surveillance cameras. There’s even one in the generator room above us.’

‘There’s
the train, Boss. Number four,’ said Gibson pointing to one of the images.

The
Brigadier touched the
screen and the
picture instantly filled the monitor. They could all see a large, open train carriage with enough seating to carry about twenty people.

‘Picture looks rather hazy,’ observed Harry.

‘That’s smoke,’ said Gibson, peering closely at the black and white image.

‘Let’s try calling the train down again.’ He punched a command into the console. On the screen more smoke began to rise from beneath the unmoving carriage.

‘Something must have burn
ed
out underneath. Maybe the electric motor.’

‘We’ll have to move out on foot,’ declared Forsythe. ‘Let’s have a look at that generator room.’ He touched the screen again, returning it to its multi-camera view. He found the right screen and enlarged it. The room was empty, the camera set at a high angle facing the steel door at the top of the concrete ramp.

‘Seems quiet,’ observed Harry.

Forsythe shrugged. ‘Even if they did get in, they’d have to know about the tunnel system. I wouldn’t worry too much, Harry. I think we’re pretty safe down here for the time being.’

‘Detonate!’

The combat engineer, wearing thick headphones, clamped his eyes shut and depressed the rubberised switch on his remote control unit. The generator room door had been quickly and expertly
assessed by the senior officer of engineers, a powerful charge rigged and the corridor cleared. Inside the CMC, Mousa crouched
against the wall with his hands over his ears, while all around him his paratroopers
did the same. The resulting explosion shook the ground beneath their feet and the loud blast echoed around the basement for several seconds. With the corridor
still thick with dust, Mousa ordered the first assault team inside with orders to clear the now-accessible generator room.

‘Jesus!’

Harry almost jumped out of his skin as the screen turned to digital snow and the overhead explosion rumbled around the cavern. After a few seconds, the picture returned to normal. In the upper centre of the screen, what could only be the entrance to the corridor showed up as a white rectangle, throwing
a shaft of pale light across the ramp. More
thin shafts of light appeared, bouncing around the screen.

‘Assault team,’
warned
Gibson. Several armed men charged into the room, torches slung beneath the barrels of their weapons, and took up defensive positions along the walls as the dust slowly began to settle. On the screen, another soldier entered the room.

It was clear from his poise and authority that this new arrival was a senior officer. Harry and the others watched in silence
as the shadowy figure made his way slowly along the line of electrical power units as if he were inspecting a squad of troops, pausing here and there to glance behind a unit or leaning forward to read a display panel. He seemed to be taking an undue interest in the room, as if he were searching for something. Harry swallowed, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. The figure carried on past the power units and approached the workbench beneath the surveillance camera. He absently fingered the tools and rags on its surface and then glanced upwards, straight into the camera lens.

‘Busted,’ whispered Gibson under his breath.

‘Major Karroubi!’ bellowed Mousa, and seconds later his subordinate limped down the ramp. ‘Look.’

Karroubi followed his superior’s pointed finger and saw the small camera mounted near the ceiling below some overhead pipe work. ‘A camera, General.’

Mousa looked sideways at his deputy. ‘Indeed. Why do you think someone would install a camera in a room such as this?’ Karroubi pondered the question.

‘For observation purposes. Safety reasons maybe?’

‘I think not,’ replied Mousa. He turned away from the camera, inviting Karroubi to do the same. ‘Over there is a sophisticated alarm panel and there are smoke detectors
along the ceiling. Why bother with a camera with such equipment in place?’ Mousa turned back to the camera. ‘Observe the angle of the lens. Does it point towards the electrical equipment on that side of the room? No. Its position and angle give it only one purpose.’

‘It points towards the door. A surveillance camera?’ answered Karroubi.

‘Correct. There is a hidden entrance to the tunnel system in this room. Get the engineers in here and rip this place apart. I want it found, Major, and quickly. Where is the SERTRAK team?’

‘On their way. Fifteen minutes out.’

‘Good. Have them standing by.’

Karroubi nodded curtly – salutes were forbidden in a combat zone – and hobbled up the ramp. Mousa wandered back to the far wall and looked up at the camera, staring hard into the lens.

Forty feet below the General’s boots, Harry and the others watched the frantic activity taking place behind the man who stared into the lens. Combat engineers were tracing pipes and cables, tapping the walls and floors for hidden or false panels. As they watched, the Arabian
officer’s hand obscured the lens briefly. When it cleared, all they were left with was a view of the workbench. Forsythe straightened up. Harry saw the look on his face and his pulse began to rise.

‘Time to leave. How’s your fitness, Harry?’

He gave the Brigadier a tight grin. ‘With those bastards up there on our tail, I think I’ll have all the incentive I need to keep going. How did they get here so quickly?’

‘Their equipment and insignia mark them out as paratroopers. They probably landed close by, maybe Hyde Park.’

‘Paratroopers? Landing in London? How the bloody hell is it possible?’

‘Hard to believe I know, but you’ve seen the evidence for yourself. Those are Arabian troops up there and, judging by the speed and significance of their arrival, I’m guessing that you’re their target. We’ve got to move quickly.’

‘Jesus Christ,’
breathed
Harry
. The
realisation that he was the
target for a foreign military power
chilled
him.

‘It’s all about speed and distance, now,’ Forsythe continued. ‘We’ve got to get to that radio in Kensington
Gardens as fast as possible.’

Harry gulped. With the train carriage out of service they were limited to how fast he could run, and that certainly wasn’t going to be fast enough. It was just over half a mile to the Buckingham Palace interchange and one-and-a-half miles from there to the disused building in Kensington Gardens. It would be tough going.

‘Let’s get on with it then,’ declared Forsythe. He reached behind the console and began snipping at the coloured wires with a multi-tool. Video feeds suddenly failed, and lights went out across the control panel. ‘No sense in letting them know where we’ve gone, is there?’

Harry nodded in agreement. ‘Why don’t we just destroy it all?’ he asked.

‘Better to leave some of it working. They might try to figure it all out, get the trains running or the monitors to work. It could buy us a bit more time.’

Out on the platform, Forsythe gathered the soldiers
around him. ‘We’ve
got to slow them down, create a diversion, so we can put some distance between them and us. We’ll need to split up.
Mike, y
ou and I will escort the PM, plus one other.’

Gibson
pointed to
Farrell. ‘You’re with us. Get upstairs and set a couple of booby-traps, quick as you can.’ Farrell raced away towards the staircase.

Forsythe turn
ed
to Nasser and Brooks. ‘You two will have a tougher job, I’m afraid. You’ll need to leave a trail, lead them away from us using the other tunnel. When you get to Mill Hill, head west to Alternate One, any way you can. You’ve got the grid reference.
Good luck, God speed.
’

Gibson slapped Brooks on the arm. ‘Off you go, lads.’

Nasser turned to Harry. ‘Just wanted to say good luck, Prime Minister.’ He stepped forward and held out his hand. Without thinking, Harry took it. The soldier clamped both hands around his own and pumped it warmly. ‘See you out west.’

‘Good luck,’ Harry echoed, faintly embarrassed by the gesture.

‘Get moving,’ barked Gibson.

With that, the two soldiers disappeared into the mouth of the northbound tunnel. After a minute or so they were swallowed up by the darkness.

Forsythe turned to Harry. ‘Ready?’ Harry nodded. ‘Then let’s go.’

Gibson led the way, towards the westbound tunnel. At the entrance, he turned and gave a short whistle. Harry looked up and saw Trooper Farrell crouched on the gantry forty feet above them. Gibson keyed his radio headset.
‘We’re leaving.’

Farrell made his way down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time, and jogged over to the tunnel entrance. ‘I’ve rigged a small shaped charge in the room up there, connected to the light switch. It’s not massive, but it’ll scare the shit out of them when it goes. The other one is big, a pressure switch set under the gantry. More than three people on that landing and it’ll blow large.’

‘Nice work
,' confirmed Gibson
.
'
Now, all of you get going up the tunnel. I’ll catch up.’

Forsythe nodded. ‘Let’s go, Harry.’

They set off at a brisk pace, somewhere between a fast walk and a jog, with Farrell taking point. Gibson watched them disappear around the bend and headed back to the control room.

He found the electrical fuse box that served the cavern lighting and, one by one, began popping the fuses, the large banks of ceiling lights going out above him, one after the other. As he pulled the last fuse, the whole complex was plunged into an inky blackness. Across the cavern, Gibson could barely make out the tunnel entrances, dimly lit by their faint blue lights. He made his way towards the westbound tunnel and disappeared into its dark mouth.

‘Well, anything?’

Mousa was growing increasingly impatient. The engineers had been searching the generator room for over thirty minutes and still they’d found nothing. He felt certain the escape tunnel was here somewhere, but so far they’d drawn a blank. The combat engineer captain standing before him shook his head nervously.

‘My apologies, General. Wherever the entrance is, it’s extremely
well hidden
. We’ll find it, though. It’s just a matter of time.’

‘Then don’t let me delay you,’ snapped Mousa, and turned on his heel.

The corridor beneath Number Ten was packed with
heavily armed
assault teams. They parted like the Red Sea as
Mousa walked through them, none willing to meet his stern gaze.

Mousa took a seat in the CMC and lit a cigarette, studying the portable command console on the conference table before him. Somali-Bitruji had made it to London. He saw that the General was setting up his headquarters in Buckingham Palace. A wise choice. It would be hard for any Englishman to order an attack on such a culturally significant landmark.

‘The SERTRAK team is here,’ announced Karroubi, limping into the room. Mousa crushed his cigarette underfoot and went out into the corridor. There wasn’t much room in the tightly-packed space and he was about to order half the assault team out, when a hush descended over the paratroopers. Mousa turned towards the stairs and saw the first SERTRAK man enter the basement. SERTRAK (Search and Tracking) teams were feared above all others
in
the Arabian forces. Drawn exclusively from Afghan units, SERTRAK personnel were trained to seek out, track and kill in areas where their enemies would least expect them to live, let alone do battle. Some of the original members were veterans of the War on Terror at the turn of the century. Living deep in caves beneath the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan, the insurgents,
as they were labelled back then, would crawl from their lairs at night to attack Government and Allied forces, engaging them on snow-capped rocky outcrops above three thousand metres or on the desert floor, where they would lie for days in man-sized ‘spider-holes’ to ambush their enemy. They were experts in fighting in dark and confined
spaces, lethal with guns, knives and their bare hands.

As the war against the Infidel occupation continued, the resistance became more organised and their leaders formed the fighters into specialised units. They were given a new name, SERTRAK, and the unit had gone from strength to strength after a number of successful operations across the Middle East. After the
rise
to power
of the Grand Mufti Khathami, they were absorbed into the Arabian Special Forces. These were men that would perform the impossible tasks, the men that would operate in places that regular troops would fear to tread. They had proved themselves to be tough, capable and intelligent fighters, and that was why Mousa needed them now.

The paratroopers assembled in the corridor watched the new arrivals warily. SERTRAK’s reputation had spread far and wide amongst Arabian forces over the preceding years and, although the soldiers that lined the walls considered themselves the elite, the men passing them now were a different breed entirely. The paratroopers were excellent soldiers, but soldiers none the less, trained
and conditioned to operate in predictable ways. But the Afghans? Some said they were cold-blooded killers sent by the devil himself and the gruesome details of their operations, filtered down through the armed forces grapevine, left nobody in any doubt of their murderous prowess.

As the SERTRAK team made their way through the packed corridor, the airborne troops moved out of their path. They numbered fifteen altogether and their uniforms consisted of various mixtures of modern battledress and traditional Afghan clothing. Despite the summer weather they wore heavy, full battle-order webbing and backpacks from which hung an assortment of gear including ropes, clamps and various other items. Each man carried at least two weapons, ranging from small arms to man-portable mini-missile launchers. However, what most paratroopers noticed were the deadly array of knives that each man wore about his body. The knife was the weapon of choice when operating in darkness and the SERTRAK teams were experts in their use. Unconsciously, the paratroopers closest to the passing Afghans moved a little further back.

The SERTRAK leader was tall,
well over six feet
, his bearded face heavily scarred. He wore a sleeveless sheepskin
jerkin over US issue combat jacket and trousers
and cradled an AK-84 in his muscular arms. He saw Mousa in the doorway of the CMC and followed him inside. Out in the corridor, a murmur rose from the paratroopers
as
the last Afghan disappeared from view. Mousa smiled to himself. These men always created a stir wherever they went.

The leader introduced himself as Captain
Haseeb and Mousa quickly briefed him on the situation. When the tunnel entrance was found, Haseeb was to enter first and capture the Infidel leader alive. The military escorts were believed to be British Special Forces. Haseeb could do what he wished with them.

Mousa watched
as the big Afghan briefed his team. Of all the people in the basement, Mousa was the only one not intimidated by these fierce mountain men. It was universally known across the Arabian armed forces that Mousa held close council with the Cleric himself, and this fact alone made him equally
as intimidating, if not more so than the hardened
killers gathered before him. After a few moments, Haseeb turned to Mousa.

‘General, my men are ready. If it pleases you, I have one or two operational requests.’

‘Go on,’ invited Mousa.

Haseeb outlined his wishes and Mousa nodded agreement. Major Karroubi was
dispatched into the generator room, where he quickly cleared out the combat engineers. Still no luck, Karroubi reported. Haseeb barked an order and one of his men stepped forward with a small black box.

‘What’s he doing?’ Mousa asked.

‘He uses a multi-band receiver, to scan for sleeper transmitters. Our teams in France have had much success in finding government bunkers with this equipment.’

Mousa could have kicked himself. The transmitter
issue was one concept
he had initially approved during the earliest planning phases, but problems were encountered with their operation. The plan was quietly shelved but not before hundreds had been issued to deep-cover agents.
He followed Haseeb and his team into the generator room, while the Afghan with the receiver unit extended a short aerial and walked slowly down the ramp, waving the instrument from side to side. A few metres behind, Haseeb turned to Mousa.

‘It is possible
an agent may have secreted a transmitter in this room or its locality.’

‘Unlikely,’ Mousa countered.

An audible beep echoed around the room. The Afghan with the transmitter walked slowly towards one of the electrical cabinets; the volume and rapidity of the electronic signal suddenly intensified. Haseeb turned and nodded.

Mousa’s pulse quickened. A deep-penetration agent in Number Ten? No, he knew of all of the high-level
agents. Someone
else then, a sleeper who had somehow gained access to the tunnel system. The chaos of the terror attacks could certainly produce such a scenario. So maybe the signal was genuine? He ran his hands over the cabinet, tapping, probing, feeling the joints for any abnormality. He summoned Karroubi with a loud bark.

‘I want this unit taken apart, now!’

Minutes later, Mousa watched with satisfaction
as an ingeniously disguised crawl space was
exposed at the
base of the
unit. Shortly afterwards,
the engineering team reported the existence of a small room on the other side. Mousa ordered the crawl space cleared and turned to Karroubi.

‘Captain Haseeb has a request. Is there a penal squad close by?’

Major Karroubi had an answer within thirty seconds.
‘Yes, General. There’s one under guard less than a mile from here.’

‘Their crimes?’

‘Most are being held for looting.
Some for
rape.’

‘Have them brought over here immediately.’

Twenty minutes later, fourteen terrified Arabian soldiers
trooped down into the generator room under armed guard. Their weapons and webbing had been stripped from them and they were forced to wear the black armbands and epaulettes of penal troops. Mousa could barely look at them, such was his contempt. He waved a dismissive hand.
‘They’re all yours, Haseeb.’

Several of the penal squad watched in barely-concealed horror as the big Afghan stepped out from the shadows. Haseeb picked out two men, gave them a torch each and ordered them inside the crawl space. One immediately dropped to his knees and began crawling. The other looked the Afghan squarely in the eye and refused point-blank, claiming his presence in the penal squad had been a mistake.

With amazing speed that surprised them all, Haseeb drew a short, curved knife and slit the man’s throat as he protested his innocence. A look of surprise came over the prisoner’s face as Haseeb holstered
the blade and pulled him out from the group, shoving him roughly across the room. The man dropped his torch and reached up, his surprise turning to shock, then fear, as warm blood ran freely over his hands, splashing down the front of his combat jacket. By the time he crumpled to the floor, another volunteer had scurried quickly into the crawl space. Mousa tried to keep the look of surprise off his own face at the speed and skill of the knife attack. A shout from inside the cabinet refocused the General’s attention.

‘We’re in a small room,’ echoed the voice. ‘There’s another door here, a big steel one. Wait… I’ve found a light switch.’

The explosion rocked the floor beneath them, sending everyone diving to the ground. A cloud of smoke and debris billowed from the crawl space and filled the generator room. When the dust had settled, Captain Haseeb bundled another penal squad member inside. He reported back a few minutes later, covered in blood and what Mousa presumed to be pieces of human tissue.

‘A cavern?’ Mousa repeated.

‘Yes, General,’ the soldier stammered. ‘And more tunnels, large ones.’

‘Get down there, quickly!’ he ordered the Afghan.

As the
remainder of the
penal troops disappeared
from view, another explosion rocked the floor beneath them. Mousa cursed the delay as Haseeb’s team were forced to drop flares down onto the cavern floor and rappel their way down on ropes. Mousa watched from above as the two surviving penal squad members, moaning in agony beneath the twisted wreckage of the gantry and staircase, were swiftly and expertly released from their pain. Next to Mousa, Haseeb listened to the team’s radio chatter through his headset. After several minutes he turned to the General.

‘It’s some sort of transport system. There are two small-gauge train tunnels, one heading north, the other west. The complex appears to be deserted.’

Mousa fumed silently. No doubt Beecham had been here, and recently; but the tunnel was far more complex than he’d
imagined. Speed was what they needed now. Mousa fired off his orders.

‘Major Karroubi, get the assault teams down here now. Captain
Haseeb, split your men into two groups and send one up each tunnel. Tell them to look for signs of recent passage. And get the engineers down there. I want power and light as soon as possible. I also want three companies of infantry on the surface at my disposal. Have them assemble in St James’s Park with their vehicles. I want to be able to cut off the Infidels’ escape once we find out where they’re headed.’ Haseeb’s headset crackled again. The Afghan listened intently for a few moments and turned to Mousa. ‘General, we have acquired another transmitter signal, broadcasting on the same frequency
as the one in the generator room. It’s
faint, but it’s there.’

‘Where?’ demanded Mousa.

‘The westbound tunnel.’

Mousa thought quickly. He turned to Karroubi.
‘My orders stand. Get it done immediately.’

‘Yes Sir.’
The
Major limped away. ‘Captain Haseeb, send your men into the westbound tunnel as quickly
as you can. We may be right behind them. Remember, the Prime Minister must be taken alive. Go!’