Invasion (27 page)

‘Here’s our chance!’ Khan hissed. ‘Hang on!’

Out on deck, Alex clung to a running rail as the Kingfisher’s engine roared into life, powering the small boat across the flat surface of the river. He crouched low, hands furiously gripping the rail. Above him he could see scores of dark figures, silhouetted against the flames of the burning trucks. It was a scene from Hell and the sound of gunfire, punctuated by shouts and screams, was deafening.

A body toppled over the parapet to their right, followed by another. Both hit the water with a loud splash. Khan spun the wheel slightly to starboard, bringing the boat almost dead centre under the middle span. The sound of the engine echoed off the damp brickwork and the boat surged through to the other side, quickly swallowed by the darkness and shielded from the bridge by the bend of the river.

After a couple of hundred yards, Khan eased the throttle back and slowed the boat to a near stop. Kirsty popped her head up from the cabin below.

‘You okay?’ asked Khan.

Kirsty nodded, her voice a little shaky. ‘What the hell was all that terrible noise?’

‘Trouble on the bridge. We’re
past it now. Check on Alex, will you?’

Kirsty stepped out of the wheelhouse and joined Alex on the rear deck.

‘Hey,’ he said quietly. ‘You alright?’

She smiled and nodded, slipping her arm through his and giving him a comforting squeeze. He squeezed back, his eyes locked on the sky that glowed red above the trees.

On Kew Bridge, the mob had finally scattered into the darkness of the surrounding streets. Behind them, littered across
the road, over a hundred of their fellow rioters were either dead or wounded. It was the Arabian officer, sleeping soundly in the back of his jeep, who’d turned the tide of the bloody engagement.

Parked up a small alleyway behind a row of shops on Chiswick High Street, the roar of the mob had sent him scrambling out of the vehicle. Avoiding the High Street itself, the officer had approached the bridge via a path near the river. He kept to the shadows and there he saw the charging mob, surging onto
the bridge above him. He’d crept forwards, keeping close to the river, lost in the dark shadows of the bridge itself. Above him, the mob were screaming and wailing, the width of the bridge packed with their bodies. Despite their superior weapons, his men were being pushed back. He glanced up to his right. He could see several of his troops running towards the southern end of the bridge in retreat. It was time to act.

One by one, he pulled the pins from each of his six grenades and lobbed them over the parapet into what he hoped would be the middle of the crowd. He didn’t stop throwing until all the grenades were gone. The resulting explosions scythed through the swarm of bodies in a wave of deadly metal fragments and scores of rioters were instantly killed or injured. The Arabians continued to fire into the crowd and the mob faltered, suddenly filled with panic – they had never seen such carnage at first hand, and the leading rioters pushed, shoved and beat their way backwards in an effort to escape.

Encouraged by the retreating crowd, the Arabians on the bridge poured fire into an
enemy that
had lost its appetite for a fight and was now scattering into the surrounding streets. The officer climbed up the bank and onto the road. He ordered his men forward, waving them back over to the northern end of the bridge. In the darkness ahead, the officer saw the mob leaders break from cover and sprint across the street, heading for the safety of the housing estate. He quickly brought his rifle up and opened fire. He was satisfied to see at least three bodies hit the pavement.

The bridge had been retaken, but not without cost. Fifteen of his men were dead and two seriously injured. Nine had been overrun by the mob and were hacked and beaten to death, while the other six had been killed by petrol bombs. Weapons were also missing. The officer was furious. Within
one minute he had personally shot dead six mortally wounded rioters where they lay. When he reached the bodies of the mob’s leaders, he found that two of them were still breathing. A total of twenty-seven rioters had been captured alive. Apart from the two older leaders, the officer was shocked to see that most were teenagers, some as
young as
twelve or thirteen. They were blood-stained and scared, shivering where they lay, face down on the road with their hands flexi-cuffed behind their backs.

The bridge was finally secured and the officer called for replacements for his casualties. The new units would be there at sunrise. The officer looked to the east, where the sky had turned from inky black to deepest blue. It would only be a few short hours until dawn. It had been a close-run thing, but his swift actions had turned the engagement and saved the remainder of his men. He glanced along the road. Street lamps, their lights extinguished
by the ongoing power cuts, stood sentinel along both sides of the carriageway. On the bridge itself, the
officer watched as the broken bodies of his men were lifted carefully out from beneath the piles of dead and dying corpses of the rioters. He looked back at the street lamps and quickly made his decision.

He glanced at his watch. The next convoy was due in seventeen minutes and he wanted the task completed before then. It was distasteful, but it would be an act of deterrence, as well as revenge for his fallen comrades. The
order was given.

The rioters
lay face down on the tarmac. For most, their earlier bravado had disappeared under the
first salvo of Arabian bullets and they sobbed uncontrollably. The older ones cursed their luck for having been caught, but also counted their blessings for having survived their encounter with these angry-looking soldiers. There would be other opportunities for violence and mayhem once they had been released. Or so they imagined.

A young rioter was dragged to his feet by two Arabian soldiers and frog-marched towards a nearby street lamp. Roughly twenty years old, he sneered at his captors. He was a non-combatant, he shouted at them, a civilian. There was nothing they could do to him. He knew his rights. They were all fucking mugs.

By the light of the waning moon, the other prisoners watched in horror as a rope was secured to the street lamp and then quickly coiled about the rioter’s thin neck. Before he could register his surprise, he was hoisted off his feet, twisting and kicking, the beginnings of a scream reduced to a strangled gurgle as the nylon noose bit into his windpipe. His face, grotesquely
contorted, was a purple mask of disbelief and horror. A stunned silence descended
over the detainees
as another rioter was quickly hauled to his feet.

Then the real screaming began.

‘Lights up ahead,’ Forsythe warned.

Mike Gibson eased back on the control lever, slowing the electric carriage to a crawl. Up ahead, distant lights cast their glow along the tunnel wall. He turned to Farrell, who acknowledged the unspoken command with a curt nod. The soldier leapt out of the carriage and headed up the tunnel. Gibson turned to the Prime Minister.

‘Nearly there. Farrell’s checking to make sure the platform
is clear.’

Harry nodded. He felt he should say something,
perhaps some words of encouragement, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. He was tired, and not just because he hadn’t slept. It was fear that was making him tired, his sky-high heart rate, the constant flow of adrenaline pumped around his system. And he felt useless, guilty, running from an unseen enemy whilst, above their heads, everyone
else was suffering terribly. And then there was Anna.

Her smiling face drifted across his thoughts and he made a conscious effort to cast that image from his mind. It was dangerous to think of her now, to try to comprehend that his life with her was over. The speed of unfolding events had helped, if help was the right word, to focus Harry’s mind on escape. But now, as tiredness
began to lay siege to his consciousness, his thoughts turned repeatedly to his dead wife. Her body was back there somewhere, broken and burned among the rubble of Downing Street. He’d never recover her, or give her a decent burial. How would he cope?

Harry swallowed hard to stifle the emotion that constricted his throat. He took a deep breath.
Don’t lose it now, he chided himself. There would be time enough to grieve later. He heard someone approaching and Farrell appeared around the bend.

‘All clear. There’s a single door on the platform and a staircase that leads to the surface. I didn’t go all the way up, but it looks clear. Dust on the floor must be an inch thick.’

‘Nice work. I think we-’

Gibson’s head snapped around, his eyes searching the tunnel behind them. It was faint at first, so faint that Harry thought he’d imagined it. But then he heard it again, a low humming that caused the soldiers to share a worried look.

‘Shit! Surveillance bird,’ Gibson hissed. ‘Hang on!’ He jammed the lever to the stops and the carriage lurched forward.

‘Airborne drone. State of the art piece of kit,’ Forsythe explained to a suddenly frightened Harry. ‘American design. Light and fast, fitted with cameras and microphones. And it’s tough, practically bulletproof.’

‘How do you know it’s one of those things?’ asked Harry, his eyes nervously scanning the tunnel behind them.

Gibson shouted over his shoulder. ‘Took part in a Yank exercise in the Mojave
Desert
a couple of years ago. Escape and evasion drills. We escape and evade, and the Yanks had to try and bag us. We nearly laughed when they gave us a four
hour start. Thought we’d be propping up the bar by the time they caught up with us, but they didn’t tell us about the drones. They
fly in all weathers and in all conditions, day or night. We could hear them buzzing around us in the dark, but we didn’t see them until after we’d been captured. They
spotted us from a couple of miles off and the controllers just vectored the hunter groups right on to us. They had us bagged in under six hours. The sound they make, it’s very distinctive.’

Harry shrunk down further in his seat, the hairs on his neck tingling.

‘We’re here,’ announced Gibson.

Ahead of them the tracks ended at a set of buffers cut into a concrete wall. Gibson brought the carriage to a stop and they all jumped off and ran for the stairs. Farrell went up first, Harry right behind him. As Forsythe went to pass him, Gibson caught his arm.

‘I’m going back, Boss. See if I can disable that drone.’

Forsythe shook his head. ‘No point, Mike. They’ll know where we’ve gone. Our only chance is to try and put as much distance between us and our pursuers as possible.’

‘True, but the Arabians have no idea how far this tunnel system goes. For all they know it could go on forever, and that surveillance bird is fitted with a GPS. As soon as the operator sees that it’s a dead-end here, they’ll send troops to the grid-reference on the surface above us. They’ll bag us for sure unless we put that bloody thing out of operation. And we’ve got to do it before it gets here. That way we might buy ourselves some time.’

‘Point taken,’ agreed Forsythe. He went back through the door onto the platform, pulling his pistol from its holster. Gibson went after him.

‘Boss, what the hell are you doing?’

Forsythe turned. ‘No arguments, Mike. It’s better if I go. You need to get up top and get on the radio. If not, you’re going to have to get the PM out of London another way, so you’ll need to recce an escape route. That’s
your department, not mine. Let’s stick to what we’re all good at. Now, get going, that’s an order. I’ll be right behind you.’

Gibson watched as Forsythe went to the platform control panel and flicked a row of switches. The cavern was plunged into darkness, only the lights from the tunnel providing any illumination. Gibson tapped the walkie-talkie attached to the Brigadier’s chest.

‘Radios should work if you’re close enough to the stairwell. Let us know when you’re on your way back up.’ Gibson pointed down the tunnel. ‘Wait until it passes you and then try and shoot its rear engine housing. It’s the only part of the drone that isn’t protected.’

Forsythe nodded and jogged down into the tunnel. Gibson turned and slammed the steel door shut behind him. He took the stairs two at a time.

Forsythe was deep into the tunnel when he heard the low hum of the surveillance drone. He stopped, noticing a dark alcove set into the tunnel wall. It was narrow but fairly deep. A man could hide in there quite easily. Forsythe squeezed his body into the dark recess until he was out of sight.

After a moment or two, the drone’s hum got louder and Forsythe’s hand tightened around the grip of his automatic pistol. Sixteen rounds meant sixteen chances to disable the drone before its operator discovered that the tunnel was a dead-end. A wave of panic washed over him as
he realised
that he didn’t know how fast these drones travelled. What if it shot by him at speed? He’d have no chance of disabling it before it reached the cavern. Damn! Why hadn’t he checked with Gibson? He felt a slight vibration in the air as it drew closer and Forsythe cocked his SIG automatic; he may only get one or two shots as it passed. He was a marksman with a handgun
;
he had no doubts that he could hit it if it travelled slowly enough, but could he disable it? He’d soon find out.

He saw a shadow expand and contract across the curve of the opposite wall and then the surveillance drone hovered into view. Forsythe had never seen one before and, for a moment, he stared at it in amazement. It flew quietly past him, six feet off the tunnel floor, its twin cameras pointed forward like two all-seeing eyes. Forsythe was relieved to see that it was travelling quite slowly and he pushed himself out of the alcove and made
after it. This
was going to be easy, he thought.

He ran forward and caught up with it within a few strides. He slowed his pace, raised his weapon and fired one, two, three shots directly into the small engine cowling at the rear of the drone. The bullets punched their way through the delicate microchips and sophisticated
avionics, one bullet even exiting through one of the camera lenses. The damage was enough.

The drone sputtered and made a sharp left turn, crashing into the tunnel wall and dropping to the ground. Escaping gas hissed noisily and sparks fizzed and spat across the concrete floor. Forsythe smiled in satisfaction. He’d killed his first surveillance bird.

‘General! We’ve lost contact with the drone!’

General Mousa’s head snapped up. He marched across the command centre, Al-Bitruji trailing behind him.

‘Where?’ barked Mousa.

The operator pointed to its last known position on a surface map of London. The flashing red icon was situated west of Serpentine Lake adjacent to Hyde Park. ‘Northeast of here, just over a mile.’

Mousa turned to Al-Bitruji. ‘Inform Haseeb’s team. Tell him he could be walking into a trap. Quickly, man!’

A seething Al-Bitruji repeated the order to a nearby subordinate. He had been barked at like a junior officer, and in front of his own staff no less. He scanned the room for their reaction, but everyone remained diplomatically focussed on their own tasks. Oh, they’d
heard it all right. It would be whispered around the command centre until even the lowliest privates would be sniggering at his embarrassment. Well, fuck them and fuck Mousa. He imagined taking Mousa by the collar of his jacket and booting him up the backside, kicking him out into the corridor to the cheers of his own troops. As the clapping subsided, Mousa’s snapping fingers cut through his daydream.

‘General. Pay attention. There is much to be done.’

Bastard
, simmered Al-Bitruji. But he’d get his revenge somehow. After all, he was no fool himself. He’d climbed to the top on others’ backs, crushing a few careers on the way. Mousa was a different kettle of fish, of course, being so closely aligned to the Holy One. No matter, he’d concoct a plan to tip the scales in his favour and tarnish Mousa’s image in the process. He allowed himself a thin smile as Mousa’s grating voice echoed around the basement walls.

Forsythe was reaching for his radio when he heard another noise from the dying machinery. He leaned over the shattered drone as it lay hissing against the tunnel wall. There was still some residual power left and its remaining camera lens whirred loudly
as it moved backwards and forwards in the nose cone. Forsythe leaned over the drone, flipped his pistol over and smashed the lens with the pistol grip. It stopped whirring.

His head snapped around as
he heard something else. It was a scraping, swishing
noise and it was
coming up fast
behind him. A finger of shadow stretched across
the opposite wall, then another. He hopped over the drone and ran back towards the alcove, squeezing himself inside the gap. He quickly changed his pistol magazine and waited in the darkness. Now he heard footfalls, the rustle of clothing, the unmistakeable rattle of equipment. Soldiers.

The
shadow fingers
stretched across the tunnel wall and then quickly retracted. The footfalls slowed. Whoever it was, they were nearly level with the alcove. Forsythe dropped his chin in an attempt to shield the paleness of his face in the gloom. He looked out from under the rim of his helmet as the first man came into view.

He was a large man, heavily bearded, wearing a sheepskin jerkin and carrying an automatic weapon. Another man joined him, similarly dressed and armed, then another. The sight of these men sent a chill up Forsythe’s spine. A lifetime of military service had taught him to recognise elite troops when he saw them. Afghans certainly, sporting ragged beards, their weapons unconventional but deadly, their dress an untidy cultural and military mix.

He could hear the drone being picked over by others who remained out of sight. Forsythe had no idea how many men there were, but he knew he was out-gunned. The big man
gestured with his hand and, moments later, two soldiers flashed past the alcove and headed towards the platform. They wouldn’t know it was there yet; it was still a good distance away around a curve in the tunnel, but they would discover it soon enough. And when they did, Forsythe had no doubt that the ground above their heads would be swarming with Arabian troops.

He had to slow them up, buy the others some time. Which meant one thing: the chances of him making it out of this tunnel alive were very slim. Any second now the enemy troops would suspect that there was someone else down here with them. How else had the drone been so efficiently disabled? And it was only a matter of time before they checked the dark alcoves along the tunnel walls. He had to act now and act decisively.

Forsythe felt a fleeting moment of regret for the way things had turned out. Although he’d
spent a lifetime in military service, he’d
always
assumed that he would see out his days in retirement, tending his modest garden at the Sussex
cottage, enjoying the occasional company of family
and friends. His wife had died several years before, lost to cancer, but Forsythe had always been an independent, self-sufficient character. Retirement was only eighteen months away. Too bad he wouldn’t get to enjoy it. Still, such was a soldier’s lot and Forsythe was, if anything, a professional soldier. He’d
give these bastards something to think about.

He ran a hand up to the webbing pockets across his chest. In one he found a single fragmentation grenade, in the other a green smoke canister. His hopes rose slightly. If he could create enough confusion and, if his luck held, he might just make it out alive. He moved his head slowly, peering beneath the rim of his helmet. The big man had moved to his left, only part of his shoulder barely visible. There was somebody
else to his right, again only half-visible. This was
his chance. Silently, he holstered his pistol; then, one after the other, he extracted the pins from the grenades.