Armageddon?? (36 page)

“How
did you get Local Defense Volunteers anyway John?” President Bush’s voice was
curious.

“I
was looking at a picture of the Civil War and it made me think of the U.S.
Volunteers. The new group is for Local Defense so I put the two together.”

“What’s
wrong with U.S. Volunteers?” Bush was curious. “Sounds good to me. We can
revive all the names of the Civil War units for the local forces. Add a sense
of history to the undertaking. We can even call on some of those re-enactor
people to start them off. They’ll have to use their own guns to start with of
course.”

“I’d
love to see the effect of a minie ball on a baldrick.” Rice’s voice was droll.
“They might like the smell of black powder though. Lots of sulfur in it.”

“So,
we’ll get the bill written and pushed through. U.S. Volunteers it is. So
decided?” Bush looked around. There was a unanimous nodding of heads. “So be
it. Next issue?”

“Aircraft
production Sir. We’re getting the B-1 production line set up now. It’ll be
starting work in around three months time, expect to see the first aircraft off
the line this time next year. It’s good we kept the tooling. The first AT-45Cs
are coming off the Boeing line now. They’re a minimum-change armed version of
the T-45C, they’ll keep the line running until the single-seat D model is
ready. F-111s and B-52s are re-entering the fleet from Davis Monthan now. A lot
of older aircraft as well, we’ve got some like the F-4 being assigned to wings,
more as placeholders than anything else. The rest we’re going to use for tests.
To see what sort of aircraft can fly in Hell-like conditions.”

“Any
F-102s?” Bush spoke with a mixture of nostalgia and enthusiasm.”

“Yes
Sir, nine were preserved, we can make two flyable. Not enough for issue so
we’ll be using them for experiments.”

“No
you won’t.” Bush spoke firmly. “This is a Presidential directive. Get those two
flyable F-102s down to Andrews and designate them the Presidential Fighter
Flight. And get somebody to check me out on them, it’s a long time since I flew
a ‘102.”

In
the background, the Secret Service Presidential Bodyguard detail went white at
the thought of a President flying a death-trap like the F-102. The President
might think he was going to fly one and the aircraft might be sitting at
Andrews with a pretty paint job but he would get in the cockpit over the Secret
Service’s collective dead bodies. From the expressions around the Cabinet Room,
they weren’t the only ones with that in mind.

‘PINDAR’,
under the MoD Main Building, Whitehall, London.

Prime
Minister Gordon Brown looked across the table at his new Deputy Prime Minister.
God (he’s have to remember not to use that name again), that grinning idiot got
on his nerves, he’d strangle him if he asked Brown to call him ‘Dave’ again.
Well, it was the price of coalition politics he supposed, and there was not a
great deal he could do about it. The PM did reflect on the fact that Deputy
Prime Minister David Cameron did rather remind him of a poor clone of his late,
unlamented predecessor. Who could have imagined that Tony Blair had been so
devout? It had come as quite a shock, even to this son of the Manse.

Given
his Scots Presbyterian upbringing, his father had been a Minister in the Church
of Scotland, The Message had hit Brown hard. He felt angry and betrayed, but
could not help wondering if this was some kind of supreme test by God, or maybe
the creature claiming to be Him was in fact not the Supreme Being at all, but
some kind of imposter. The latter had certainly been the opinion of the
Moderator of the Church of Scotland when Brown had spoken to him.

In
the first couple of days after The Message there had been a great deal of
uncertainty in the United Kingdom. Those who were most religiously devout,
around a tenth of the population, had died; some had just lain down and given
up, others had committed suicide in a variety of imaginative ways. Some
religious leaders had spoken to the Prime Minister, demanding that Britain
surrender to the inevitable; those that were still alive were now residents of
HMP Belmarsh, which was rather empty now that most Islamic fundamentalists were
gone.

While
a smaller proportion of the population of Britain had died, the deaths had been
largely concentrated in a few areas. Parts of Leicester and Bradford had become
ghost towns and at least a couple of the smaller Western Isles had been totally
depopulated. Clearing up the bodies before they decayed and caused a disease
outbreak had been quite an undertaking. The government had called in the army,
who had assisted in clearing up the corpses and building the funeral pyres used
to dispose of them. Facing economic and social chaos on a scale never before
seen, Brown had declared a State of Emergency and had signed Queen’s Order Two,
mobilizing the entirety of Britain’s Armed Forces. ‘Entirety’ included all
reserve forces, service pensioners and all cadet force personnel over sixteen.

Britain
was going to need everybody who could hold a rifle, or train others to do so.
One largely unknown fact was that the Army Act and its counterparts covering
the RAF and Royal Navy allowed for the reintroduction of conscription without
any new act having to be put before Parliament. In his second speech to the
British people Brown had announced the immediate reintroduction of National
Service for everybody between 19 and 55. Finding enough equipment, uniforms, or
personnel to train the millions of men and women who would now be inducted into
the army, navy and air force was another matter, and would take some time.

The
next step had been to examine existing Emergency Powers Bills that had been
prepared for potential wars and see what was applicable to this particular
situation. While all of the anti-terrorism related emergency plans were up to
date those doing the research were rather alarmed to find that the last time
the plans for General War (the closest scenario to this one) had been updated
was 1992! This set of plans and Emergency Powers Bills had served as the basis
for those that had just been rushed through Parliament along with a declaration
of war on Hell, which along with Britain’s devolved parliament and assemblies,
was now prorogued, the remaining members having dispersed to their
constituencies.

At
least now with Parliament prorogued Brown would now only have to deal with his
Cabinet and the three First Ministers, though they could be something of a
pain. At least many of the government’s emergency powers overrode much of their
authority. The Prime Minister realized that the Minister of Defence was
speaking and tried to look like he had been listening all along.

“…And
the news from Iraq certainly seems to be good. The baldrick attacks on Allied
Forces have been totally defeated and their army is in headlong retreat towards
the Hellmouth.” Admiral of the Fleet Lord West was saying. “Damn all good it
will do them because the American 1st Armored Division and the Iranian armored
division have cut off their line of retreat.”

Appointing
Admiral West as the new Secretary of State for Defence had come as a
development of the horse-trading that had taken place during the formation of
the Coalition government. The Service Chiefs as well as the Conservatives and
Liberal Democrats had made it very clear that they had no confidence in West’s
predecessor, Des Browne, so he had to go. The Admiral was already the
Parliamentary Undersecretary for Security, so he had experience of working in
government, he had great experience of military matters and was highly
respected by both the Services and politicians.

“The
4th Mechanized Brigade has performed very well against the baldrick army; I
think our retention of rifled guns for the Challenger 2 has finally proven its
worth.” The Admiral said, continuing his briefing. “They’ve demonstrated an
ability to strike the enemy at a greater range than the smoothbore guns on the
American tanks.”

“That’s
certainly true.” General Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff,
agreed. “Our HESH rounds have also proven to be somewhat more effective than
the HEAT rounds used by the Abrams, though we do need something like the
canister round they have. There was a canister round produced for the old
Challenger 1, and if we have any left they may be compatible with the
Challenger 2.”

“Talking
of shells, ammunition is one thing that Major General Binns has expressed concern
about.” Admiral West told the Prime Minister. “A great deal of ammunition was
expended in stopping the baldrick attack and while the stockpile in theatre is
in no danger of running out just yet he is beginning to run short.”

“I
take it we are moving further supplies to Iraq?” The Prime Minister asked.

“Yes,
Prime Minister.” West confirmed. “We are moving stocks of ammunition from the
UK and Germany to Iraq. The remainder of the 1st Armoured Division is moving to
ports of embarkation in Germany in case it is needed in Iraq, and we have
alerted 3 Division to be ready for possible deployment, though we may need them
at home.

“Immediate
reinforcements for our forces in Iraq will come from Afghanistan, where the
threat has disappeared overnight. In fact the senior surviving Taliban
commander has sent a message to the commander of ISAF offering the support of
his men in fighting the war. Iran has agreed to assist in the movement of our
troops, and other contingents of ISAF from Afghanistan to the theatre of
operations.”

The
Prime Minister nodded, indicating that he understood.

“What
progress is being made regarding the restarting of tank shell production?”
Brown asked. “I don’t think that we can rely on supplies from South Africa, as
memory serves they were somewhat shoddy anyway.”

“We
have sent a Ministry team up to the site of ROF Bishopton, along with some
chaps from BAE. It seems that the factory is still largely intact, so
restarting production should not be too difficult, if a bit expensive.” West replied.
“Fortunately the plans to build houses on the site were delayed, so no
demolition has taken place and most of the equipment is either there, or was
put into secure storage. The initial estimate given by my people is that the
factory should be up and running within two months.”

“Good.”
The PM replied. “I trust there will be no problems regarding finance,
Alistair?” He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

“Not
at all, Prime Minister.” Alistair Darling replied. “Defence and industrial
projects related to the Defence of the Realm will get all the money they need.
The Bank of England is printing more money so that we can continue to pay our
bills; that does, of course risk the most appalling economic downturn when the
war is over.”

Gordon
Brown laughed, the first time he had done so in a long time.

“Only
if we win, Alistair. If we lose then I don’t think it will be a problem.” He
turned back to Admiral West. “Admiral, if at any point BAE drag their heels,
either over Bishopton, or increasing production of aircraft, tanks, rifles, or
whatever, tell them that should they continue to bugger us around Her Majesties
Government will nationalize the company and sack the management, thus making
them eligible to be conscripted into the army.”

“Certainly,
Prime Minister. I shall certainly look at sending them somewhere nasty if that
happens.” West said.

“I’ll
deploy them to Iraq.” Dannatt commented. “My soldiers need more equipment as
soon as possible, so I’ll not have them putting their lives at risk any more
than they are already. There is one thing that we do need to ask your
permission to do, Prime Minister. The SA80, along with all rifles chambered for
5.56mm NATO rounds have proven to be less than effective at dealing with
baldricks. They will kill them, but it takes a great deal of ammunition, and
has resulted in soldiers being killed before the baldrick dies.

“We
have found that the .338 Lapua round used in our sniper rifles is far more
effective, so we would like to start immediate and rapid development of a rifle
chambered for this round to replace the SA80. My staff have identified the old
SLR as a suitable basis for this weapon, so we would like to arrange for
production facilities to be set up as soon as possible.”

“An
Urgent Operational Requirement I take it, General?” Brown asked. “Then by all
means do whatever is necessary to get this weapon into the hands of our
soldiers.

“On
another matter entirely I have heard that the Americans have managed to make
contact with some of their soldiers in Hell and are in the process of starting
an insurgency. Are we engaged in a similar undertaking?”

He
saw the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, smile
in very cat like way.

“We
most certainly are, Prime Minister. Our Special Forces people are working very
closely with the Americans on this. If possible we’d also like to try to
contact any of our personnel who have ended up in Hell. We believe that if we
can organize all of the ex-military personnel who have ended up in Hell, or
even just a small proportion of them, then we may be able to get quite a
rebellion going.”

(Thanks
to Jan who wrote the beginning and end of this part)

Chapter
Twenty Seven