The Fall of Night (29 page)

He scowled.  “It would be a perfect target for submarines or aircraft if we could deploy them up there,” he said.  “The Russian navy has moved several sub-hunters into the area and is deploying the transport convoys with some really heavy escorts.  As for aircraft, they have deployed mobile air-search radars everywhere, and you can bet that they’ll be backed up by the latest ZSU missile launchers.  With so much of our AWACS capability, even with the French…”

Langford held up a hand.  “The French?”

Erica blinked.  “You were sent an email about it,” she said.  “A French AWACS landed in Dover; scared the shit out of the airport crew as they thought that it was Russian and it couldn’t get in contact with anyone on the ground.  We barely saw it from the air before it came in to land; the radar network is shattered.”  She smiled.  “And there’s this plucky little French Lieutenant, barely twenty years old if he’s a day, trying to do his duty and give us all the records from his plane before he collapsed.”

She allowed her smile to fade.  “We put them all to bed and dug up a reserve crew for the aircraft,” she said.  “The French boy wants to talk to someone in authority as soon as possible.”

“I’ll see him,” Langford said.  “Now…”

Sargon nodded.  “We don’t have the capability anymore, if we ever did, to launch an air attack into the teeth of those defences,” he said.  “A single stealth Eurofighter Tempest might get in there, but the damage it could do would be limited, and we have only one tanker left to support it; no ELINT aircraft any longer.  We may get more aircraft coming out of Europe, but at the current state of play, I doubt it.”

He looked at the map.  “I believe that the Russians will push into Germany as soon as they can,” he said.  “That won’t be more than a few days at most.  Once that happens, the remains of the defences will crumble and our units there will be trapped.”

Langford stroked his chin.  “You do not believe that it can be held?”

“The Germans have been scattered, just like the Poles and the French and…well, us, except we don’t have more than a few dozen commandos running around on our soil to worry about,” Sargon said.  “There’s no longer any coordination; I am certain that the German soldiers will fight, but they won’t be able to hold a defence line for long in the face of Russian firepower.  As you know, all of the European militaries operate on a ‘just-in-time’ basis when it comes to supplies; the Russians hit the three main supply depots on the continent.  The Americans say that the explosions set off the nuclear watching sensors.

“Bottom line, sir; they’re going to run out of ammunition,” he concluded.  “I have no doubt that the Russians will push them before they can even begin to get production lines set up; as you know, ammunition production for the larger and more powerful weapons was always on a scanty basis.  One of the factories for the Knife antitank missile, for example, is now behind enemy lines in Poland.  It will take weeks, if we are lucky, to expand production and by then…”

“The Russians could be eating cheese and drinking Chateau Picard in Paris,” Langford said.  “Can’t we hit their supply lines?”

Sargon shook his head.  “With what?  We don’t have the assets or the bases to launch such attacks from British soil…and with the situation on the ground becoming so nightmarish, we don’t have bases on the continent any more either.  I believe that the only option we have is to recall all of our remaining units on European soil and attempt to get them to Britain before the Russians crush them.”

Langford eyed them.  “You’re advocating that we abandon our allies,” he said.  It was so hard to think, so hard to grasp; his head was hurting and he wanted to sleep desperately.  “We made commitments…”

Erica spoke sharply.  “General…with all due respect, that no longer matters,” she said.  “EUROFOR HQ is gone; the Americans think that Islamic rioters destroyed the building after the missiles hit.  The united command system is down and there is no hope of getting it back up again.  There may be still vast assets on the ground, in theory, but we cannot get them to work together any longer; in reality, there are merely pockets of resistance in a swarm of panicking humanity.”

She took a breath.  “Europe has fallen already,” she said.  “It’s only a matter of time before the Russians move onwards and complete the task.  If we don’t get those men and their equipment back as quickly as we can, whatever it takes, we will lose them, permanently.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Reds Under The Bed

I have here in my hand a list of 205 names that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.

Joseph McCarthy

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Hazel had spent the evening in a state of near-terror.

Morningside was normally one of the quietest places in Edinburgh.  Where there were places where street fetes and parties were the norm, Morningside operated on the basis of quiet-is-best.  Hazel was barely old enough to remember the millennium celebrations at the turn of the century; her husband had been a toddler at the time.  Now…now Morningside seemed to be caught in the middle of a nightmare; there were alarms, bangs and shouts going on all over the place…and the sky was burning.  Every time she peered towards the centre of the city, she could see smoke rising from the crash site and…

She had been sick, repeatedly, as soon as she had entered the house. Her husband had told her something about emergencies and she hadn’t been a military wife for so long without learning something herself, but chaos and gunfights on the streets of Edinburgh were something new and terrifying.  She’d been able to have a brief word with her neighbour, who’d told her that there had been an explosion in Colinton, near the barracks, and she’d almost fainted before realising that Stuart was safe in Poland.  She was almost grateful; he would have been spared the chaos on the streets.

The television had failed along with the power.  Stuart had given her a small military-issue field radio; one not for transmitting, but receiving; an emergency model that had been popular for a few years after Oakland.  The British Government had designated a channel as the Emergency Broadcast Channel, with the advice that people should listen to it as soon as an emergency happened, but every time she’d tried to use it, it had failed.  There had been literally nothing on the airwaves; she wasn’t even certain if anyone was in control.  There were no policemen patrolling, no soldiers with guns; the civilian population seemed to have been completely abandoned.  It reminded her far too much of the
Dies the Fire
film that she’d watched back when she was dating Stuart Robinson, with the civilians abandoned to whatever fate the gods decreed for them.

The night had passed slowly.  There were places in Edinburgh that were rough and violent and she allowed herself to hope that the police and soldiers were dealing with them.  Perhaps Morningside was peaceful enough to prevent them from having to make a major deployment, or perhaps…she refused to think about the other possibilities.  Her father had been out of town for the day; he was probably worried sick about her, but there would be no way to get back to Edinburgh.

Hazel had paced and paced.  The news she had received had made her day, literally, but now she was worried; what happened if she died, in Edinburgh, alone and unnoticed.  The government-issue booklet on preparing for emergencies, generally considered to be useless even as toilet paper, had been no help. 
Stay in your homes unless you are in immediate danger
, it warned. 
Help will come to you
.

It had been hours since the air crash and no help had come.

Once again, she picked up her mobile phone in-between dozing fitfully through the night.  It was recording no signal, no sign at all that there was anyone else out there.  The landline telephone had gone completely as well; she had attempted to fire up the Internet-attached computer and remembered, moments later, that there was a power cut.  The battery-operated laptop, connected to the telephone line, failed to connect to the British datanet.

Morning dawned, and with it, footsteps and voices upstairs.  Her heart had started to race – Stuart had warned her that when the Police were gone, the looters came out to play – and she had started to head for Stuart’s gun cabinet before realising that it was only the two lodgers, returning home.  She was relieved; Stuart had told her the combination to the gun cabinet, but had warned her never to touch the weapons unless it was absolutely desperate.  They’d all heard tales of political correctness gone mad, from the driver who had had too much to drink before an accident, and had taken someone to the hospital only to be charged with drunk driving, to the farmer who took pot-shots at thieves, only to be charged with manslaughter.

These days, being a Good Samaritan would only land a person in jail.  It wasn’t worth the risk; something important had died in British culture when that landmark case was fought, won and lost.  No one would come to help someone screaming for help any more, nor would they even call the police; it just wasn’t the world her father had been born into.  The Britain that had stood alone against Hitler was no more.

She opened the door to the back stairwell and walked up quickly.  She was more concerned about the two Russians than she was prepared to admit; they were both strangers to the city and the influx of Slavic refugees had not been warmly welcomed by the Scottish public.  She would have bet that there was a lot of violence going on; whatever the lying cheating politicians in the Scottish Parliament had claimed about immigrants being useful for the economy, she knew that there weren’t enough jobs for the British, let alone foreigners.  She opened the door and peeked into the living room; both men had their backs to her.  She coughed…

…And then she saw what they were assembling on the table.  It was dark and shiny, glittering metal; it was a weapon of some kind, a genuine military weapon.  There was none of the simple workmanlike design of the shotgun, or even of the revolver; the weapon looked intimidating beyond belief.  The two men jumped as she coughed, spinning around; Sergey Ossetia grabbed up a pistol from the table and pointed it at her, moving faster than she would have believed possible.

Her mouth fell open.  No words emerged.

Rashid Ustinov moved forwards like lightning.  Before she could react, he caught her and swung her around, pushing her against the wall.  She opened her mouth again to scream and he pushed his hand against her throat, preventing her from breathing in more than a little air.  Ossetia snapped something in Russian – she couldn’t understand it at all – and Ustinov snapped something back, then pulled her away from the wall and pushed her over the table, far too close to the strange weapon.  Strong hands caught hers and pulled them behind her – she couldn’t even gasp in pain – and then tape was wrapped around her wrists, securing her hands behind her.  A moment later, her legs were taped together as well and Ustinov lowered her gently to the floor.

Hazel fought for breath as two sets of cold blue eyes stared down at her.  She was terrifyingly aware of her own vulnerability, her own weakness; they could kill her at any moment and she couldn’t even crawl away.  She opened and closed her mouth, feeling silly even as she tried to regain control of her body; she wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare.

She asked a question instead.  “Who are you?”

***

Ustinov stared down at the blonde woman and felt…conflicted.  The rush of power he had felt as he had forced her into submission – never mind that she wouldn’t have posed a real threat to him and his training anyway – had manifested in a wave of lust and desire.  He knew that he could indulge it without compromising the mission more than it had already been compromised, but he refused to give in to that desire.  His father…

Ossetia checked out Hazel’s part of the building quickly.  If she’d had friends staying, if they had fled the building as soon as they heard the struggle, they would have had to assume that their base was compromised.  Ustinov allowed himself a moment of pure relief when his partner reported that everything seemed fine; Edinburgh was a strange mixture of chaos and stillness, as if a storm was about to break.  They’d seen thousands of people trying to get out of the city; only a handful of people had been trying to come into the area.  Anyone would think that they thought that there was something to be scared about.

“It’s clear,” he reported.  He looked down at Hazel; it didn’t take a mind reader to know what he was thinking.  FSB soldiers got some special perks that ordinary soldiers didn’t get, starting with first access to the brothels that the rear units would set up in their path.  “Sir…”

Ustinov shook his head.  “No,” he said, in Russian.  Plenty of English men and women would know that ‘
nyet
’
was Russian for ‘no’ – perhaps Hazel would recognise that he had spared her from a fate worse than death.  She looked up at him, her eyes wide with fear; he hadn’t even answered her question.  She was probably wondering what they were going to do to her.

He switched back to Hazel and spoke in English.  “Are you all right?”

Ossetia spoke before she could answer, in Russian.  “Sir, we do not have time to spend coddling her,” he snapped.  “Use her and eliminate her, or just…”

“Silence,” Ustinov said.  He turned to Hazel.  “Are you all right?”

“I'm pregnant,” Hazel said.  Her voice was broken, sore; he’d pressed at her throat to prevent her from screaming and it had now damaged her throat.  It would recover, eventually, but for the next few hours it would be hard for her to talk.  It took a second for the impact of her statement to crash down on him;
pregnant
!  “I missed my period and I wondered and I went to the nurse and she told me and…oh god, what are you going to do to me?”

Her voice broke off somewhere between a sniff and a sob.  Ustinov stared down at her, his mind churning; his own conception was the product of a rape.  His mother, who had raised him despite the disapproval of almost all of her family, had been caught up in the middle of a terrorist action – the occupation of a building in Moscow.  She had been blonde herself, and beautiful then; one of the terrorists had raped her several times and then saved her life when the Spetsnaz launched their attack to liberate the building.  She had named him after her father, who had been shot in the head several times by the man who would later marry her; the Spetsnaz Captain who had brought the young Ustinov up as his own.  His stepfather, who had gone on to be one of the planners for the occupation, had told him that if he went into the occupation corps, he would be doing the same as had happened to his mother…and Ustinov had been determined to avoid such a fate.

Ossetia looked up at him.  “Sir, with all due respect, she is a security risk,” he said.  “One scream at the wrong moment and we will be caught before we can carry out any more attacks.”

Ustinov winced.  The plan had been for them to lie low for a week, get a handle on the situation, and then either carry out further attacks designed to incite chaos or find a way out of the city and then the country.  He knew, now, that Control had launched more attacks than even he had guessed…and the hints from his stepfather of something really big being about to happen came back into his mind.  What had happened…and what would happen?

Ossetia was waiting for him to make a decision.  Ustinov cursed under his breath; the British would be quite within their rights to shoot the pair of them if they caught them, and while Ustinov didn’t fear death, he did want it to mean something if – when – they died.  He was right…and yet, he didn’t want to kill Hazel if it could be avoided.  If he could keep her alive without compromising the mission, he would do so, even if Ossetia disagreed.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, to Hazel.  “We don’t want to kill you, but we will if we have to, so we need you to listen.”

He paused.  How much did he dare tell her?  “We’re Russian soldiers,” he said, shortly.  “We were sent here by our superiors to fight a guerrilla war against your people.  We don’t intend to remain here – in this building - much longer, but while we do, you present a serious risk to us, understand?”

She nodded fearfully.  Ustinov felt for her.  Feelings were dangerous on a mission, his trainers had warned him, but he could no more abandon them without obvious danger than he could cut off his own penis.  She was a pretty woman, and she was pregnant; it was that, more than anything else, that drove his decision.

“We’re going to have to keep you secure here for a week,” he said.  Her eyes went wide.  “We can’t risk having you running around unsecured, so we will put you in the basement, but we will take care of you.  In exchange, we want you to remain quiet and not draw attention to yourself; once that is done, we’ll free you before we leave.  Do you understand?”

Hazel had new tears in her eyes.  She was about to start an ordeal…but she would survive it, unlike either of the two Russians if they were caught.  They’d managed one strike because the British hadn’t expected it; now, they’d be lucky if every place that was worth hitting didn’t have an armed guard.  They would pick their targets carefully, but it would be difficult and dangerous.