Invasion (52 page)

‘We really must push on, Prime Minister. The attack could start at any time now and we’re quite exposed here.’

Harry nodded grimly. The troops that had provided perimeter defence around
McIntyre had been transported south four hours ago to fill gaps in the defence
line. There now remained only a single company of soldiers providing
security and they, too, would be leaving on waiting trucks, just as soon as Harry was airborne. The
liaison officer was right. McIntyre felt suddenly naked, exposed by its dwindling security force. Still, that was okay with Harry. There were thousands of ordinary people across the country whose safety was also compromised. Why should he be any different?

He turned to look for Gibson but he’d disappeared into the night, towards the troop trucks that rumbled on the road beyond the trees. All that remained were his footprints in the snow, snaking towards the distant
forest
. His eyes travelled across the familiar
silhouette of McIntyre Castle, a place that had become home for the last few months and a place that he would probably never see again. Harry fought back a wave of emotion. Time passes, things change, even more so in wartime. It was an inevitable fact of life.

‘I’ll look
her,
don’t worry,’ Kerr assured him, as if reading his thoughts. ‘She’ll be here for another five hundred years, I’d imagine.’

Harry turned and forced a smile for the old Scot. ‘There’s still time for you to join us, Bill. Plenty of room on the chopper.’

Kerr shook his head. ‘I’m not one for travelling, Prime Minister. Besides, it’ll be much too cold for them heathen bastards up here. I’ve a wee feeling that, if they dare come this far, they won’t stay for long.’

Harry gripped the old man’s hand. ‘I hope to God you’re right, Bill.’

‘I generally am,’ smiled Kerr.

They parted as they’d met, in the black of night, by the windswept shores of Kerrera Sound.

On the British front line, the men of the Royal Engineers finally finished their preparations. Scrambling from the trenches, they ran to the hardened shelters just as the horizon to the south lit up the pre-dawn sky. Within seconds, tens of thousands of artillery rounds began impacting on the border in a barrage not seen since the Second World War.

The first rounds fell purposely short, chewing up the fields of razor wire and tank traps, as Arabian
Forward
Artillery
Observers hidden near the British lines radioed back new targets to the heavy gun and rocket crews. High explosive rounds rained down on the defences themselves, while
airburst
shells detonated above the front line, sending millions of white-hot fragments down into empty trenches.
Starburst
shells lit up the sky, and long-range rockets sought out tanks and armoured vehicles hidden behind the front line. For forty-five minutes the earth shook and the sky glowed red as the storm erupted along the length of the Scottish border. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the shelling stopped.

Inside the command post at Fort William, General Bashford and his staff watched their display screens intently. The images they were watching were being broadcast from UAVs circling high above the front line, the border transformed into a landscape of huge, muddy craters wrapped in a drifting curtain of smoke. Slowly, as the fog began to clear, more distinct objects began to take shape. Some trench systems were still intact in places, along with their supporting fire point and gun emplacements. Above the Cheviot Hills, where the main Arabian thrust was anticipated, the UAVs were piloted further south as their on-board cameras swept the darkness beyond the pitted battle lines. And that’s when they saw them.

All along the
border, whistle blasts
brought troops sprinting from the shelters to their defensive positions. They poured into the trenches to discover that a great many had been chewed up by the massive artillery barrage, and their well-constructed and expertly camouflaged fire-points had been reduced to mud-filled craters and splintered timbers. Entrenching tools were produced and the battered defences shored up as quickly as possible. With
the hasty repairs completed, all eyes turned to the south.

Thousands of flares were fired into the sky. The razor-wire
fields were gone, scattered in twisted clumps across the scarred landscape, or completely obliterated by the artillery storm. On the approach roads, the concrete tank obstacles had been mostly reduced to rubble or simply pulverised by the massive force of the barrage.

As thousands of phosphorous para-flares drifted towards the ground, the defenders looked beyond the nightmarish scene to the south. The glow of the
flares cast long, dark shadows, reflecting off the curtain of smoke that had begun to dissipate on the pre-dawn breeze. The British troops were dug in as best they could. Every soldier was equipped with more ammunition than they could possibly carry, plus several light anti-tank weapons each and, as
the minutes ticked by, the tension mounted to almost unbearable levels. As the troops waited nervously for the Arabians to appear, an eerie silence descended along the border.

The soldiers defending Keegan Fell heard it first, the clank of steel and grind of caterpillar tracks that echoed menacingly over the hills. A hundred pairs of binoculars
were trained south and a thousand pairs of eyes strained to catch the first glimpse of the enemy. A whistling sound that grew into a screaming crescendo signalled another barrage that had every British soldier hugging the bottom of his trench. It lasted for two long minutes and, when the shell-shocked troops finally peered cautiously over their defences, they discovered that they couldn’t see more than fifty yards.
The
thick smokescreen
swirled
and eddied before them, but the noise behind it grew louder. Tanks, lots of them, advancing up the broken tarmac of the A68 and through the forests of the Northumberland National Park. All along the trenches, heads swivelled and eyes strained to pierce the clouds of smoke, flickering beneath the harsh light of the flares. Hearts hammered, weapons were cocked and bayonets fixed with trembling fingers. It was going to be hand-to- hand when the Arabians broke through, of that there was no doubt.

Now another sound penetrated the fog, a deep rumble that grew into a metallic roar, advancing up the slope towards the dug-in soldiers on Keegan Fell. The ground began to shake beneath them. A heavy-machine gun opened up to the west, but stopped after repeated shouts of cease fire echoed across the ridge top. All that could be heard now was the eerie clank of tracks and the whine of gas-turbine engines that increased in volume with every passing second.

Suddenly the wind picked up, gusting from the north. Like a curtain drawn back, the smokescreen
across the battlefield
was blown away in a matter of seconds. As the fog swirled and dissipated, the troops on Keegan Fell saw the monstrous Layered Defence Destroyer less
than one hundred yards away, its huge caterpillar tracks whipping up sprays of dirt as it bore down on the nearest trench. Packed tightly behind it, hundreds of Arabian troops stumbled through the mud, ready to fan out once their giant protector had breached the trenches. Further behind, scores of tanks and thousands of troops advanced in a great wave towards the Fell across the pitted terrain.

Within seconds, British troops launched a fusillade of anti-tank rounds at the LDD, whose wedge-shaped blade seemed to deflect the swarm of missiles as they bounced and skimmed crazily into the sky. Others aimed their missiles at the massed ranks of Arabian soldiers immediately
behind, who struggled up the slick, muddy slope in an effort to keep up with the LDD. The detonations
sent bodies spinning through the air like rag dolls. More British troops, suddenly aware of the imminent danger to their defences, opened fire with heavy weapons and small arms, cutting down hundreds of Arabians in a withering cross-fire. More flares lit up the sky as the defenders further along the Fell saw the strength of the enemy before them. The call went out.

Ten miles behind the
frontline
massed British artillery opened fire on pre-programmed coordinates. Along the Fell, the defenders roared with delight
as a curtain of steel erupted across the battlefield, sending huge columns of black earth into the sky. But the rounds had fallen short and someone else had also anticipated the artillery attack.

Inside two Big Eye surveillance aircraft orbiting seventy-five kilometres behind the battle zone, Arabian operators noted the heat blooms of the British guns and the arc and fall of the initial bombardment. In a matter of seconds, the data had been downloaded to several Arabian artillery batteries positioned twenty kilometres behind the front line. They immediately launched a deadly salvo of over four thousand high explosive missiles, averaging over two per target.

Nearly sixty per cent of British artillery was destroyed in that first barrage and those units that did survive thanked their lucky stars, shut down their systems and quickly moved position. The best they could hope for was to get off maybe two or three rounds before they had to change position again. It wasn’t going to be enough.

On the front line, British joy turned to despair when the artillery rounds stopped falling amongst
the Arabian tanks. Illuminated
by a constant
shower
of flares, the ground below the Fell was now an undulating
mass of Arabian troops and vehicles as wave after wave crossed the muddy, cratered earth below. Scores of tanks nosed their way out of the tree line further to the south and opened fire, adding to the crescendo of noise and screams that threatened to deafen everyone on the battlefield.

With a thunderous roar, the LDD reached the nearest trench line, the log walls collapsing beneath
its massive tracks as the giant vehicle shuddered to a halt near the crest of the Fell. British troops scattered left and right along the forward trench line, running through the mud to new positions. The LDD gunners inside their reinforced hull directed their weapons and hosed the trenches in either
direction with machinegun
fire. Grenade tubes fired round after round of high explosives along the defence line and the detonations banged and cracked along the muddy channels.

But the driver of the LDD was having difficulty moving his massive machine. This wasn’t like the exercises on the hard-baked terrain of the North African desert. Here, the slope rose steeply and the ground was a quagmire. As he tried to coax the LDD up toward the flat ground beyond the peak the giant machine stubbornly
refused, slipping sideways, then backwards. The caterpillar tracks were thick with cloying mud and, in his ear, the driver could hear his superior yelling at him to continue over the crest of the Fell. But getting there was proving to be the Devil’s work. The shouting in his earpiece got louder as an anti-tank round detonated against the side of the hull.

The driver reversed a few metres, crushing
several Arabian soldiers sheltering behind its massive bulk, then applied full power. The
LDD lurched forward again, clearing a wide gap in the British defences that the following Arabian troops began to pour into. The driver accelerated the LDD further up the slope and finally crested the summit of the Fell, crashing down on the other side with a deep, seismic concussion. Immediately, the rear ramp went down and the Arabian infantry inside the LDD split left and right along the rear trench lines to engage the British.

Above the ear-splitting wall of noise that greeted them, they heard the unmistakable
blast of whistles.

The whistle blasts pierced the roar of battle and shrilled all along the British defences. Sector after sector acknowledged the signal and retreated north as planned. In many areas, the defenders fell back under heavy fire as the Arabians pursued them relentlessly, spilling into trenches and bunkers behind them like an unstoppable tide. Less than half of the British troops in these sectors managed to escape. The rest were either dead, wounded or simply cut off by the fast-moving Arabian forces.

Perversely, in other sectors along the border, not a single shot was fired as the defending troops listened to the sound of distant battles rumbling across the night sky. When the whistle blasts echoed over the hills and through the forests the defenders withdrew, moving quickly and quietly to the waiting transports.

In the black shadows of Ker hope forest, near the Cumbrian border, Mike Gibson dived for cover yet again as more debris rained down around his trench. For the
last twenty minutes Gibson and his fellow defenders had managed to keep the Arabian troops at bay with sustained heavy weapons fire, mortars and anti-tank rounds, but now the enemy had drawn close all around them and the heavy weapons were out of ammunition.

The trench line ran along the southern edge of the forest, where Gibson and Farrell had finally joined a mixed unit of British Paras and Special Forces one hour before the attack began. After the initial Arabian barrage, Gibson and his men had managed to stem the ground assault for some time, but Arabian infantry soon flanked their trenches and there was now intense fighting to the rear. Pinned down in his trench, Gibson heard the whistle of the withdrawal signal, but some of the lads were still fighting close by and he wouldn’t leave them. He was surrounded now, cut off from his escape route.

He leaned against the rear wall of the trench, raised himself up and peered carefully in all directions. Through the trees behind him he could see muzzle flashes and heard the sharp detonation of grenades. The Arabians were clearing the trenches one by one, and all around
him he could hear shouting and screaming in a foreign tongue.

He looked down at Farrell’s body. A round
had taken him straight through the temple and he lay sprawled at the bottom of the trench, his legs twisted beneath him. Gibson had no illusions about his own fate and he certainly wasn’t going to surrender. He called out, trying to make contact with someone, but this time his calls went unanswered, the radio strapped to his body armour lifeless. The sound of the British guns fell silent and Gibson realised he was the last man standing.

Suddenly a dark shape ran towards him from the trench to
his right, silhouetted by a burning tank nearby. He opened fire with his rifle and the figure hit the ground hard with a low grunt. He swivelled around
as he heard the sharp crack of snapping branches behind him. Two more figures rushed through the pine trees, screaming in an unintelligible tongue. Gibson dropped them both with another short burst.

The punch in his back winded him, sending him crashing into the trench wall. He spun around to see another Arabian charging out of the smoke ten feet in front of him. Gibson fired a single round and missed. His rifle was empty and he threw it at the advancing shape, then drew his pistol. He fired two quick rounds and the Arabian fell headlong, landing a few feet from the trench. Gibson thought about taking his weapon, but the man had fallen on top of it and suddenly it seemed like too much effort to recover it.

He must be winded, because his chest hurt and he was having trouble breathing. He reached around under his left armpit and felt the warm stickiness beneath his body armour. His head swam and his knees began to buckle. He slid down the trench wall and slumped heavily on the dirt floor, his breathing
laboured and a sudden tightness constricting his chest. Farrell stared across the trench at him with lifeless eyes and Gibson looked away, towards the sound of movement close by.