Invasion (38 page)

‘Wake up, boss!’

Harry cracked an eyelid then sat up sharply, throwing off the bed covers. Gibson and Farrell were framed in the doorway of his private quarters, the light flooding in from the corridor behind them. He was confused. Both men were now wearing civilian clothes, tshirts and cargo pants, but still had their fearsome-looking
weapons slung across their chests.

‘What
is it?’ he demanded groggily.

Gibson snapped the light on and marched into the room. He grabbed
Harry’s
trousers
and shirt from the wardrobe and thrust them towards him.

‘Plan’s changed. Time to leave.’

‘Now?’ Harry rubbed his face, fingering the sleep from his eyes.

‘General Bashford’s
orders. Departure time has been brought forward. Everyone’s leaving.’

‘Why?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I thought we weren’t moving until later?’ Gibson ignored the comment. He stepped into the bathroom and turned

the shower on. ‘No time for
chitchat
, boss. The General’s waiting for us.’

Harry did as he was told. Showered and dressed, they navigated the tunnels until they arrived at the operations room. The corridor outside was busy with troops, yet there was none of the squaddie banter that Harry would normally expect to hear. Instead, the soldiers worked in silence, their arms laden with supplies and equipment, urged on
by senior NCOs
whose hushed voices remained calm and assured.

Harry didn’t feel very calm. The tunnel was hot, the air stale and heavy, the abnormal silence of the men around him unnerving. He stayed close behind Gibson, who carved his way through the throng and into the operations room. Harry cuffed a fine sheen of sweat from his forehead, glad to have escaped the claustrophobic corridor.

The first thing he noticed was the conference table, the chairs that ringed it empty, its surface covered with boxes filled with buff-coloured files and computer equipment. The space around the walls was the same, lined with packing crates and more cardboard boxes, while a crocodile of troops filed in and out of the room, grabbing what they could.

Harry felt a hand on his arm and Farrell eased him to one side, out of the way of the busy soldiers. He caught the eye of one man – well, more like a boy, Harry realised, his thin arms straining beneath the weight of a large wooden box stuffed with manuals and rolled-up maps. Harry had a mind to help him
but, as he moved to do so, the boy gave him a wink, then filed silently out into the corridor with the others. Harry shook his head. Cheeky bastard, he smiled, admiring the kid’s impertinence, the absence of fear despite the threat that faced them. Looking around, Harry saw that same expression on all their faces – a steady resolve, a youthful disregard for the dangers ahead. Brave lads, he admitted, all of them. Braver than him, anyway.

General Bashford was at the far end of the room, flanked by Major Monroe and a handful of senior officers in a cluster of camouflage uniforms. They were gathered around a single radio operator, listening to the traffic that squawked and crackled from a wall-mounted speaker. All the other operators were gone, the row of computer screens that lined the wall dark and lifeless. Bashford turned as Harry approached.

‘Ah, Prime Minister. Good.’

Harry could see the man was tired, the dark circles beneath his bloodshot eyes, the unshaven cheeks, the dishevelled uniform. The other officers looked the same, exhausted both physically and mentally. A dangerous combination in a crisis, Harry knew. ‘What’s happened, General?’

‘A few hours ago an Arabian UAV was shot out of the sky by one of our air defence teams. Seems it was taking an unhealthy interest in Alternate One. We must assume we’ve been discovered.’ The general picked up a file from the conference table marked
Confidential
and began emptying its contents into a large shredder nearby. It whirred angrily, the plastic sack beneath bulging with paper spaghetti.

‘I see,’ replied
Harry, unsure
of how to respond.

‘It was only a matter of time, anyway. Since then, signals units have been picking up coded Arabian transmissions all afternoon and the volume of messages is increasing. The
intelligence suggests an imminent assault.’

Harry paled in the harsh light on the operations room. ‘Jesus. How long have we got?’

‘Hard to say, but I suspect time is short. I’ve ordered a wholesale withdrawal and the ships at Teignmouth are to be filled as soon as possible. The
Deputy PM and several other senior civilian staff have already departed on my orders. We’ll rendezvous again in Scotland, once we’re settled. Our own helicopter will leave in thirty minutes.’

‘Right,’ Harry mumbled, trying to keep up. Like the others
he was tired, exhausted actually, despite the couple of hours sleep. He noticed a large urn and a tower of paper cups on a nearby table and headed towards it. Coffee. Perfect. He poured himself a cup, left it black, and heaped in a couple of sugars. He sipped at the dark brew as Bashford emptied
the last of his papers into the shredder.

‘We need to move fast,’ the general warned. ‘So far the evacuation has gone smoothly, hardly any civilian traffic on the roads at all. That will change, of course,
when the Arabians start advancing
towards
us. It’s imperative
we get our forces clear before panic sets in.’

Harry pulled a chair from the
conference table and slumped into
it.
‘Running away,’ he grumbled, ‘that’s the truth of it. Quite frankly, I’m ashamed to call myself Prime Minister.’

‘We have no choice,’ Bashford reminded him. ‘You know that.’

The general was right, but now evacuation had started, the reality of leaving the civilian population to an uncertain fate left Harry feeling nauseous with guilt. The simple fact was England was lost. She’d been invaded before, many times over many centuries, but it was different now. There would be no secret mustering of an army, no forging of arms by village blacksmiths, their hammers ringing out a message of defiance across feudal England. No, this was the twenty-first century, and history would no doubt reveal that the battle had been fought and won by the Arabians long before a single shot had been fired, that Europe had been conquered by stealth and guile, by agitators, appeasers and fifth columnists. And, like the government
itself, the British army had also been ambushed, its forces scattered and in disarray, leaving a frightened population undefended.

Harry could taste the bitterness of personal defeat in his mouth, his ambitions, his vision for the country’s future prosperity, all now consigned to the waste bin of history. After the dust had settled, when everything was said and done, he would only be remembered
as the man in charge when it all went wrong. Harry grimaced. If that was the case, then so be it. All he was left with now was the urge to contribute, to do something positive, something that would help save time, or lives. Something. Anything.

He sipped his coffee, feeling the caffeine slowly energising his system, his eye drawn to the huge map of Britain on the wall. He was lost in thought for several minutes, the germ of an idea slowly taking root in his mind. After another minute or so he drained his cup and stood. ‘General, how many troops do we have in place to slow the enemy?’
Enemy.
Strangely, the word didn’t feel unnatural when he said it.

‘Right now, about four thousand, most of them dotted along the predicted routes of advance.’

‘And we’ve no chance of stopping the Arabians?’ Bashford shook his head. ‘Short of tactical nukes, none.’

‘Then let’s get them out.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Everybody. We don’t leave a single soldier behind. You said it yourself General
,
we’ll need all available personnel
when we get to Scotland.’

‘That may be so,’ warned Bashford, ‘but the blocking force is vital. Their presence will buy us valuable time and, in the process, save lives.’

‘At the expense of their own?’

Bashford held the Prime Minister’s gaze. ‘Possibly, yes. That’s why we asked for volunteers.’

Harry held up his hands. ‘General Bashford. I’m not trying to debate with you. You’re the senior military commander and I hold your experience and expertise in the highest regard. But legally I have ultimate authority over our armed forces, isn’t that the case?’

The other officers in the room ceased their low chatter. Even the speaker on the wall had fallen silent. Bashford folded his arms and nodded slowly. ‘That’s correct. I can only advise you, Prime Minister. The
final decision is still yours.’

‘Thank you.’ Harry approached the wall map, where a line of coloured markers
dissected the western leg of England, the final positions of the men staring down the mouth of the Arabian advance. He studied it for a moment, making sense of the lines and distances involved, believing he had a decent grasp of the tactical situation. Hoping was probably a more accurate word, he chided himself. He stabbed a finger at the map. ‘Let’s withdraw everybody, General, all four thousand of them. Send the closest troops to Teignmouth right away and the rest of them north to Scotland. They won’t make it to the docks in time.’

Bashford joined Harry at the map. He spoke quietly, out of earshot of the other soldiers in the room. ‘That’s very dangerous, Prime Minister. The moment the Arabians get a sniff of a general withdrawal they’ll send everything against us. I don’t advise it.’

‘I don’t want a single drop of blood spilt unnecessarily, not for those bastards.’

‘In this situation, bloodshed is unavoidable. What we need to focus on is limiting our casualties.’

‘We can still do that though, can’t we?’ Harry tapped the icons on the map one after the other, the units on the defensive line. ‘All these vehicles, tanks and so on, they’re
as good as written off, correct?’

Bashford nodded. ‘We’ll lose them, yes. Unfortunate, but necessary.’

‘How many men does it take to operate a tank? Or a missile launcher? Obviously I’m no expert, but aren’t some of these weapons platforms automated?’ The general stared long and hard at Harry. He turned away, studied the map again, his eyes roaming the icons, arrows and coloured lines that constituted the
defence of Alternate One and the western leg of England.

Harry moved a step closer, his voice low. ‘Do we really have to risk so many men in a futile defence, General Bashford? Is there any way we can appear to be holding the line when in fact we’re making good our escape?’

Bashford stroked the white stubble on his chin, deep in thought. ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

Harry watched him cross the room. Bashford gathered the other military men into a tight circle, the low murmur of their voices drowned out by the noise
from the wall speaker. Harry stepped back as they crowded around the map, their language almost unintelligible. But he had them thinking, that much he realised, and for the first time in a while Harry began to feel a little more confident, a little more hopeful that he’d influenced things in a positive way.

After another hurried conference, the military men broke up, some heading for the door, others converging around the radio operator, who began chattering into his headset. Bashford called Harry over to the map.

‘Well, you’ve thrown a bit of a spanner into the works, Prime Minister. But in essence, you may have hit on something.’

Harry nodded gratefully. ‘Good. Tell me what you think.’

Bashford picked a china graph pencil and began scoring it across the map.

‘Right now the Arabians are reluctant to use their aircraft, no doubt due to our successes against the Big Eye and the Raptors. So, for now, an air assault is unlikely.’ The general made more marks with the pen. ‘As you know, we have armour here, Challenger tanks and fighting vehicles, dug in and camouflaged along these probable routes of advance. Hard to detect and excellent firepower, but these particular crews are low on fuel. What we propose
is that their tanks are emptied and the fuel redistributed to other crews for their own escape runs. The dry armour will then be left in place, with skeleton crews. Their original orders were to fire and manoeuvre but, obviously, with empty fuel tanks they won’t be able to do that. What they can do is engage
as many targets as possible, then bug out before the enemy can zero in on them. The crews will then use other transport to make good their escape. As for the infantry units, the order has already gone out
– a staggered withdrawal, some to the coast, the rest to the north. In a couple of hours, there’ll be less than a thousand men on the line to halt the Arabian advance.’

‘That’s excellent
news. And our air defences will still be operational?’

‘As you suggested, the SAM units will be left in place and set to auto mode. It means they’ll launch at just about anything, but it’ll buy us time.’

‘How many units do we have?’

‘Twenty-three, each with at least two live missiles. All in all, we can fire over a hundred heat-seeking and infrared homing weapons, plus some turret-mounted electronic cannons designed to engage low-flying enemy aircraft.’