Omega (57 page)

'It makes sense,' Dan agreed. 'And that means our PAG must be in action at the same time.'

Jean Thomas turned to Gareth and asked: 'When you were at Karen's place did you hear anything about Avebury?' Everybody smiled; Jean and Fred Thomas's devotion to Avebury, the megalithic site nearly thirty kilometres north of Stonehenge, was known to everyone in the camp. Avebury was less spectacular and world-famous than Stonehenge, and its stones were smaller, but it covered a far greater area with Avebury village at its centre; many witches and occultists, and even archaeologists, found it more interesting and rewarding than its famous neighbour.

'Not much,' Gareth answered. 'I know it's outside the territory they control. I heard a bit of conversation about it once - someone suggested taking it over but Karen said no, it wasn't worth it, Stonehenge was enough. I sort of gathered there were only a handful of villagers living there.'

'That's good,' Jean said, and Fred nodded with her.

'What's your point, Jean?' Greg asked. "Want a second honeymoon there?'

'All right, all right, have your joke. But Fred and I have been thinking. We knew the battle with Karen's lot was coming; now we know it's on 21 June, and it's pretty certain they'll be at Stonehenge. If we want a power-house for the PAG, why not Avebury? There's more power locked up there than anywhere in Britain - even than Stonehenge, though I know you think we're a bit
biased
about that, so let's just say it's in the same league as Stonehenge. And they've been linked together in people's mind for so long, the psychic channels will be there between the two. We could make it the weak point in Stonehenge's armour.'

Greg was already peering at the map. 'But it's about 150 kilometres from here, love.'

'So what?' Fred supported his wife. 'We could rustle up enough bicycles and horses to reach there in four days at the most. Or even take one of these useless vans we've got parked here - we've got enough petrol stored and you do still sec the odd vehicle on the move, using its last tank-ful to look for new
lebensraum.
People don't pay much attention to them - just look up at the unfamiliar noise and then get on with what they're doing. Especially if they see guns . . . We could take the PAG, which is eighteen, plus half a dozen strong-arm boys to protect them. Two van-loads altogether, say.'

'But what for?' Sam Warner interjected. 'Tire ourselves out travelling, just to get a little extra power out of Avebury? We could end up even.'

'Not with Avebury,' Dan said. 'You kn
ow what? - I like
the idea. Oh, we all pull Jean and Fred's leg about the place, but some of us do know just how powerful it really is.
And
it's a psychic "in" to Stonehenge, as Fred says. What's more, the Angels wouldn't be expecting an attack from there. It
could be organized. . . .
What do you think, Moira?'

'I think Jean and Fred may have something,' Moira said.

26

On a hill by the Swindon road, a kilometre or two outside Avebury, twenty-six men and women watched the sun go down on 20 June from an abandoned house on the edge of a wood. They had been there for two days; Dan had allowed eight days for the trek from Dyfnant Forest, to be on the safe side, thinking that Fred's estimate of four days was probably an underestimate. He had been right. With diversions to avoid communities and having to cross the Severn above Cheltenham (the motorway bridge at Chepstow was reported to be held by a brigand group), the journey had taken six days.

They had decided, after some discussion, that motor transport was worth the expenditure of stored petrol. The camp's petrol reserves were higher than they had foreseen, chiefly because Greg's water-driven power system was increasingly efficient and an electrical circular saw meant that the petrol-driven chain-saw was rarely needed, and ploughing and harrowing were entirely by horse. So with much back-tracking to avoid fissures, they had travelled with two mini-buses, a car and one motor-cycle for scouring ahead. The total party had grown to twenty-eight - eighteen in th
e
PAG, eight armed guards and two radio operators trained by Geraint and Tonia. The pack radios, ingeniously built by Geraint and Greg from cannibalized ordinary radios and useless TV sets begged from the village, had a maximum range of about fifty kilometres; one operator, with a guard to defend him and keep him company, was already in position, well concealed, with a good view of Stonehenge and further armed with a pair of binoculars. Every hour, on the hour, he sent the code word 'Cabbage', which meant 'No activity at the Henge', and Miriam, who manned the set with the PAG, acknowledged. She kept continuous watch in case of developments but otherwise they kept radio silence except for the brief hourly report. The crucial code word would be 'Aconite', meaning that the Angels of Lucifer were occupying Stonehenge - for the watching operator was Bruce Peters, who knew Karen and John and several of their group by sight.

The time would come, obviously, when the 'dozen or so prepared code words would no longer be adequate and Bruce would have to describe what he saw in clear for the benefit of the PAG. But by then the ether would be alive with the Army messages of D-Day and one short-range voice on a non-Army frequency (Gareth had been able to inform them on that) would with any luck pass unnoticed.

Two of the guards had spied out Avebury village as soon as the PAG were installed in the empty house. The little cavalcade had apparently managed to arrive without alerting the village; the approach had been very circumspect, by moonlight and without lights, and with slow and careful reconnaissance ahead of the main party. The vehicles were -well hidden in the wood and camouflaged.

The Avebury community, the spies reported, consisted of seven adults and four children; they slept, without posting sentries, in the Red Lion,
the village pub which had (the
Thomases remembered) several bedrooms. This was good news, for it made the PAG's plan of operation simple. The last thing they wanted was a battle.

The White City stadium, on the western fringe of central London, was a fortress. The Army had commandeered it ten days before Beehive Red and since then no one had seen inside it. There had been much coming and going of helicopters in those ten days and nobody living around had bothered to keep count, so it was anyone's guess how many remained there after the earthquake. The wise deduced that it was a Beehive helicopter base, and the wise (even, very soon, the foolish) kept away, because anyone who approached within a hundred metres was sniped at - one shot as warning and the next to kill. Nobody, of course, could get high enough to see inside. It was something of an anomaly, as the only known Beehive presence on Surface - though gradually rumours circulated of other stadiums and football grounds (all of them completely surrounded by stands or high walls) scattered around the capital which it was inadvisable to approach. As
the months went by, the few local civilians who had survived the Madness and the winter had come to take them for granted and ignore them, from a safe distance.

But tonight those who lay awake noticed there were unprecedented noises of activity inside White City. Peering out of their windows they saw the glow of many lights reflected from the thin night mist above the stadium and they wondered. Then, in what should have been the deadest hour of the night, no one slept any longer, for the first of the helicopters clattered up into the sky.

Harley, sitting at General Mullard's side in the Operations Room five hundred metres below Primrose Hill, glowed with a euphoria which for once did not exasperate the general. Mullard was a soldier to his marrow; intelligent and sensitive, he could be plagued with doubts beneath his impassive exterior as long he was confined to sedentary planning but once the die was cast (he had a habit of muttering
'Jacta est alea'
with a puffed-out breath of relief) the doubts faded away. Action, for good or ill, was an elixir; his expression did not change but his eyes had a new sparkle and his staff could depend on hair-trigger decisions from him even in the face of reverses -
particularly
in the face of reverses. Operation Skylight was going smoothly into action; the intricate timetable of troop movements out to the helicopter bases was running without a hitch; the Z-minus-four helicopters, first of the day's flow of shuttles, were all reported away. The first entries had appeared on the virgin wall-charts, and the WRAC girls, like uniformed croupiers, were sliding the first coloured symbols on to the huge map of Britain painted on the Ops Room table. For the first time in months, General Mullard felt one hundred per cent alive.

If Harley effervesced with excitement and confidence, who was he to criticize? At least the man recognized that this, for the moment, was the Army's show and did not interfere.

At Windsor Castle the entire community was barricaded in the Round Tower, with every firearm they could muster and the approaches barbed-wired. The courier from Camp Cerridwen had warned that the attack was to be expected at 0900 hours
- the assumption being, apparentl
y, that by then most of the community would be up and about in the grounds, unsuspecting, and even if the attackers met with difficulties, hostages could be taken to be shot at regular intervals unless and until the Royal Family surrendered.

But now it would be the attackers, not the defenders, who would be surprised.

As the Prince of Wales put it to Norman Godwin: 'If they want to take us alive they're going to have to blow us up first.'

At t
he village in Savemake Forest th
e prisoners huddled in the schoolhouse under armed guard, their hands tied behind them. Their bonds were hardly necessary, because they were all in a dream-world, thanks to the drugs which Stanley Friell had prepared for them. The drugging was purely to make them easy t
o handle and transport to Stone
henge; once they were there, an antidote would restore them to full awareness for Karen insisted that all sacrifices' terror would add to the power raised. Four of them - three men and a woman - were locals who had offended the Angels of Lucifer; the other two were an itinerant man and woman who had tried to pass through the village in their wandering, unaware of its reputation.

The seventh chosen sacrifice was sitting, unfettered and undrugged, with Karen and John, and she had chosen herself. Ever since Bill Lazenby had been offered up on the Altar Stone, Sonia Forde, the Maiden, had been transfigured. For her, the blood sacrifice had been a transcendental experience, sweeping through her in a blinding vision of power - literally blinding, for she had had to be led home and had not seemed to recognize her surroundings for three or four hours. Since then she had been in a state of mys
t
ic rapture. Two days ago she had not
asked
Karen but had
told
her, that she, the Maiden of the Angels of Lucifer, had been touched by their Master and granted the privilege of being the first Midsummer Sacrifice. Karen (who believed in neither God nor Devil, only in an impersonal cosmic power which she had the knowledge to tap and direct) had seen the light of ecstatic madness in Sonia's eyes and had agreed at once. It was an unexpected bonus to her plans; Sonia was twenty, auburn-haired, slim and nubile but (for neurotic reasons, Karen knew)
virgo intacta.
By all traditional standards, she was ideal. And her willing sacrifice would have a valuable psychic effect on the others.

Sonia sat now between herself and John, erect and proud. She had dressed her hair with great care and made up her face, heavily but skilfully and dramatically - as well as her nipples, for she wore nothing but a spotlessly white skirt and a necklace of pearls. To this infringement of her own regal monopoly, Karen had raised no objection; nothing must challenge the martyr's vision of herself.

Karen glanced past the entranced girl at John, wondering, with a rare flash of unease, at his expressionless face. Usually she could read his thoughts like a neon sign but as D-Day drew nearer, a screen had dropped between them. He had not argued with her and he had played his part in the planning efficiently and with apparent determination, but he had said little and none of that at all revealing.

She ban
ished the unease deliberately.
I
am the channel of power,
I
am the leader. Nothing shall stand in my way today. Certainly not John. He will do what is required of him. As will Harley, afterwards.

At three in the morning, silently and keeping to the shadows as far as possible on this bright moonlit night, the PAG and their seven guards and Miriam approached the Red Lion. The PAG were to take no part in the capture, for they must remain as calm and rested as possible for the later psychic battle. Four of the guards surrounded the building to prevent anyone escaping through windows or back doors. The other three broke into the front door with a jemmy.

The sound woke the house and for two minutes there was uproar and shouting, but - thank heaven - no shooting. Five minutes later, all eleven of the villagers had been herded into the dining-room, the curtains drawn, and candles lit. They looked indignant and bewildered as Dan began to address them.