Invasion (16 page)

Nico Panayides, his hands expertly flexi-cuffed behind him, sat on the car park asphalt with twenty-two of his colleagues and watched in horror as column
after column of Turkish battle tanks rumbled through the rocky canyon and surged across the border into mainland Greece. Above them, attack helicopters nosed ahead of the armour, seeking out targets.

Panayides felt he was living inside one of his nightmares. As senior Greek Customs Officer at the Kastanies international
border crossing, it was he who was ultimately responsible for the security of this section of the Greek frontier. Here, in the steep valleys and jagged peaks of the Rhodope
Mountains
, Greek customs officials
fought a continuous battle against cross-border infiltration, people-smuggling, drugs and weapons offences and all manner of illegalities and infringements. The border with Turkey was marked by sharp, rocky slopes and the fast-flowing Evros river, as it meandered for approximately two hundred and forty kilometres from the Bulgarian frontier in the north to the Aegean sea in the south. It was tough, dangerous country, but Panayides and his vigilant team of experienced
officers had seen it all before at this busy border crossing.

Busy. That was a word that, remarkably, didn’t apply that morning. In the four years since Panayides had been in charge at Kastanies, he’d seen hundreds of vehicles pass every single day in either direction, from huge articulated lorries to single mopeds and every size of vehicle in between. Every day, day in, day out, for the last four years. Except today.

A few hours earlier, Panayides had been sitting in his office and checking the daily figures on his computer terminal. Since eight o’clock that morning, one hundred and forty-four Greek-registered
vehicles had crossed into Turkey and seven had crossed from Turkey into Greece. Seven.

Normally, the Greek checkpoint would expect to see at least two to three hundred vehicles
pass in both directions through the border. But seven? He checked the terminal again. None of the Greek vehicles had returned, either. Now that was odd. Panayides picked up his binoculars and walked to the window. From his first-floor office he could see the Turkish customs post, a mile further down the road. Beyond the distant fences and barbed wire, the Turkish flag hung limply in the still evening air from the roof of the administration building. There was no queue of vehicles waiting to cross into Greece, no people bustling around the car park; it seemed extremely quiet, which was most unusual.

Beyond the customs post, the ground rose steeply and the road disappeared, twisting around the foothills into Turkey itself. What was going on behind those hills?
wondered
Panayides. Despite Turkey’s
entry into the European Union and the continual protests from Ankara and Brussels, Greek border controls had remained tight and ever vigilant. Personally, Panayides was only too happy to enforce Greece’s
commitment to the security of her frontier with Turkey. It wasn’t that he felt any personal animosity to the Turks, but it was hard to forget the violent history and bad blood that existed between their countries. It was one of the reasons that the Greek government had resisted Turkey’s entry into the EU, but their concerns were ignored. Turkey
was rich and powerful, and the bureaucrats in Brussels salivated at the thought of all that Turkish money flowing westwards. But the Greeks remained watchful. It would take many generations before they trusted their old enemy.

Panayides was relaying his concern to Athens when, shortly before 7.00 pm local time, business began to pick up. He ended the phone call and went to the window. Several cars had begun to filter across the distant border and he scanned them with his binoculars as they approached Greek territory. The vehicles were Turkish-registered and, after pulling into the empty car park below Panayides’ window, the occupants got out. They were all men, some in pairs while others travelled alone. As the rules dictated, they headed towards the customs hall below him. Businessmen, assumed Panayides. They emerged a few minutes later, climbing back into their vehicles and continuing their journey into Greece. Panayides checked the log on his terminal. Still no sign of any Greek vehicles.

Just before eight, a large coach with darkened windows crossed from Turkey into Greece and rolled into the car park. Panayides watched as the passengers disembarked, stretching and rubbing their cramped limbs. They looked like a football team, he thought, all dressed in the same red tracksuits. He was intrigued as to where they were playing and who. Panayides had always been a big soccer fan. He’d played regularly as a young man and had potential, or so he’d been told, until a knee injury forced him to give the game up for good. Now in his late forties, he was too old to play competitively. Too old and too fat, his wife liked to remind him. She could talk.

There were about thirty of them, all Turkish nationals. Panayides watched as the footballers headed into the customs hall beneath him. The younger ones were smiling and joking around and the older guys with them were a little more stern-faced and serious. They must be the coaches and support staff. They wore jackets and trousers, but they still looked pretty fit. Just before they disappeared out of view, Panayides saw one of the older guys reach inside his jacket. As he did so, two of the younger men turned to face the car park, their smiles gone
,
their eyes sweeping the area as if searching for something. One of the younger men said something to the older guy as they filed slowly into the building.

It was at that precise moment that Panayides felt it. What it was he couldn’t quite place; a look, a whispered word, something. But it felt wrong. He decided to go downstairs and study the group from the observation room as they filed through the main hall. He picked up his radio and ordered one of his colleagues to run the licence plate of the coach. Slipping his cap onto his balding head, he made his way downstairs and along the corridor.

As he reached the door to the customs hall, it flew violently open. Panayides stumbled backwards, lost his footing and ending up on his backside on the tiled floor. He caught a flash of red as several men rushed past him and pounded up the stairs. There were shouts, banging, and glass breaking.
Before he could react, he was dragged to his feet and bundled into the customs hall, where somebody spun him around and slammed him against a wall, tying his hands expertly behind his back with a tough plastic tie. After a few seconds, the rest of his men were all similarly trussed up and facing the wall. It was only then that Panayides realised that the football team held weapons and the older guys had produced radios and were talking urgently into them. After a few minutes, Panayides and his colleagues were marched outside and grouped on the ground in the car park. That was roughly thirty minutes ago.

In that time, several military trucks and tracked vehicles had crossed the Turkish border into Greece, while army engineers had dismantled the barriers and bulldozed the chain-linked fences on either side of the road. The Greek flag had also been removed. Panayides saw that the tracksuits of the football team had been replaced by camouflage uniforms. At least his instincts had been proved right.

The
ground beneath them began to rumble. Greek heads swivelled
as the noise increased and echoed around the steep canyons. In the distance, accelerating past the Turkish border post, a column of armoured vehicles roared towards them. Panayides sat on the ground and watched the seemingly endless convoy snake its way past in a cloud of dust and continue on into Greece. He was filled with a mixture of fear and rage. Were they at war? How the devil did it happen? And why?

The border was now wide open and, as Turkish troops jeered from the turrets and cabs of their vehicles, Nico Panayides wondered if he’d live to see the dawn of a new day.

While
the
surviving governments of
the West screamed for
information, undercover
sleeper teams and deep infiltration units of the Arabian forces went to work. Using human assets working on the inside, or through sheer surprise and deadly force, transport control centres and major road and rail junctions were seized and secured by thousands of small but heavily armed groups of men and women. On targeted motorways, vehicles were blocked from joining the carriageways and motorists already travelling on them were encouraged to leave at the next exit, often by the sight of a large tanker or heavy low-loader truck slewed across the lanes and accompanied by bursts of automatic fire. No one needed telling twice. All major road routes across Europe were secured and quickly cleared. The Arabian advance teams were expecting traffic
. L
ots of traffic.

Meanwhile, inside European Air Traffic Control centres, sleeper agents began their well-rehearsed diversionary tactics. As the power cuts across Europe forced ATCs to switch to emergency generators, smoke flares were thrown into empty rooms and stairwells. Fire alarms were tripped and bomb threats called in. Alarm spread quickly. As buildings were evacuated, air traffic control was hurriedly passed on to other ATC centres and airports,
which
suddenly found themselves in the grip of their own emergencies. Across the skies of Europe, aircraft were ordered to maintain holding patterns. In most cases, operational personnel inside the ATC buildings followed standard emergency procedures and filed outside, where they gathered in car parks and other designated areas to await staff roll calls. Most were unaware that, as they left their control rooms, their places were being taken by specially trained teams of Forward Air Controllers of the Arabian armed forces.

The FACs settled into comfortable wheeled chairs, slipped on their communication headsets and quickly absorbed the information that glowed on the consoles in front of them. For the next two hours they had only one priority: clear the skies.

In the air, pilots’ headsets hissed with new instructions delivered by unfamiliar voices. Despite initial confusion, the urgency of the controllers
encouraged them to execute flight plan changes immediately. Hundreds of civilian passenger aircraft were
skilfully
diverted and landed as quickly as possible
at the nearest airport that could accommodate them.

On the ground, at the major airports of Paris, Lyon, Rome, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam and others, police and security units suddenly found themselves embroiled in deadly gun battles that raged around the passenger
terminals. Terrified civilians
and airport staff
scattered across roads and motorways to
escape the gunfire as control towers, fuel storage depots and other secure areas were assaulted and seized. The battles were over quickly and had cost half the lives of the sleeper teams. Yet, despite their own losses, they had managed to secure their targets and take up defensive positions inside. Like their Brothers and Sisters at other major airports across the continent, they waited patiently for the main Arabian forces to descend upon Europe.

Every major European city was rocked by a series of co-coordinated terror attacks that rippled across the continent. Army and Civil Militia units suddenly found themselves under assault in their own barracks while, on the city streets, police officers screamed for backup over lifeless communications networks.

In the Spanish capital of Madrid, the high-security National Police Station on the Puerta Del Sol was devastated
by a huge bus bomb, detonated a few moments after
seven
pm local time. As survivors staggered out of the smoke and rubble, fourteen Libyan commandos, armed with sniper rifles and dispersed along the high rooftops that overlooked the square, began opening fire. Nearby police and Guardia Civil units that responded to the blast suddenly found themselves in a war zone. Similar scenes were repeated
all across Europe but, in terms of violence, Paris was to suffer the most.

Several hundred sleeper agents had descended on the city centre throughout the day, travelling alone or in small teams from the bleak, soulless estates that ringed the French capital. At 7.00 pm, they created havoc. For the Algerians amongst the sleeper teams, and there were many, it was a night of remorseless revenge. While most hadn’t even been born at the time, all Algerians
were aware of the 1961 massacre of nearly two hundred of their countrymen by the French police and security forces, most victims either beaten, shot or garrotted to death, while others were thrown into the fast-flowing River Seine. Now, sixty-eight years later, the Algerians would have their revenge.

Nearly every police and civil guard station in the city centre was attacked. In most cases, heavily-armed sleeper teams took up positions around the target buildings and bombarded them
with
automatic weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades. In others, suicide bombers
entered police stations under the pretence of reporting a crime. Once inside, with a muttered prayer or a scream of victory, they detonated their devices. Yet more sleeper teams began their deadly work inside the army and Gendarmerie Nationale buildings where they were employed. Guards were killed, keys were snatched, doors and gates unlocked, armouries broken into, weapons and vehicles stolen and human targets identified and killed. Anarchy consumed the city.

The fires and explosions across the centre of Paris could be seen and heard for some distance. From the balconies of crumbling tower blocks in the crime-ridden suburbs, the disenfranchised,
dispossessed and displaced residents that made up the lowest class of France’s social order looked out across the city at the countless pillars of black smoke that towered into the sky and the fireballs
that mushroomed above the distant rooftops with every passing minute. But the spectacle did not fill them with fear. What they saw wasn’t death, or carnage or chaos
;
they saw motive and opportunity. And they sought revenge on a society that had cast them into concrete prisons, both poverty and despair their ever-present jailers. It was time to escape.

At first they were just small groups, maybe ten or twenty youths, stoning panic-stricken motorists on the surrounding overpasses. Soon the numbers grew into hundreds and the hijackings began. Drivers
and passengers alike, having escaped the horrors of Paris city centre, now found themselves being dragged from their vehicles and beaten. Some were lucky enough to scramble away from the mobs, their clothes in tatters and their bodies bruised and bloodied, but still able to make good their escape on their own two feet. Others were not so lucky.

Across the Seine, in the western suburb of Nanterre, two quick-thinking girls, both students at the Universite Pantheon Sorbonne, had seen the distant fires and decided to escape the city. Their plan was to make for the forest of St Germaine and hide there until they could figure out what the hell was going on. In their small apartment they quickly grabbed a radio, some bottled water, bread and cheese, a torch and two sleeping bags. In the underground garage beneath the apartment block, they unplugged their Renault electric car from its lifeless recharging post and piled in. The power indicator told them that they were good for at least two hundred kilometres.

The car accelerated up the ramp and out onto the street, heading north to intercept the A14 trunk road that would take them out of the city. The girls were terrified as cars roared past them, their occupants crazed with fear. They both screamed
as another car overtook them with centimetres to spare, only to take a right-hand turn at high speed and roll, turning over and over until it collided with a shop front and burst into flames.

Instinctively, the driver turned left. She knew that she was headed away from the motorway, but fear now dictated her actions. The girls found themselves driving along a residential street where grimy apartment blocks and graffiti-daubed walls lined their route. They turned left and headed north again, the road leading them deeper into a maze of dilapidated streets. Smoke drifted in the air. As they passed a wide avenue to their left, they saw cars burning fiercely across the middle of the road and a single body lay motionless on the ground. The girls cried in fear, the driver accelerating and wrenching the wheel hard right. As they careered around the corner at sixty kilometres an hour, they found themselves face to face with a thousand-strong mob marching on the city.

A rock bounced off the windshield and they both screamed. The driver
panicked and covered her face, slamming her foot down to brake but flooring the accelerator by mistake. The crowd tried to avoid the speeding vehicle, but it
was too late. The Renault ploughed into the mob, tossing bodies high into the air. Some were caught under the front wheels and dragged along the ground, their limbs ripped and torn, their screams drowned by the roar of the scattering crowd.

The Renault shuddered to a halt, its bodywork
battered and slick with blood. Desperately, the driver tried to start the car. It was a fatal mistake. In seconds, the vehicle was swamped, the occupants dragged out and beaten. Sensing blood, the remainder of the crowd surged in, trampling some of the injured to death.

In the moments before they died, the girls were savagely
beaten then repeatedly raped on the crumpled hood of the Renault by a frenzied mob, urged on by jeering hordes
that
couldn’t see what was happening, but could sense the power that emanated from an unstoppable force in a lawless environment.

After a few painful minutes a man stepped forward, pushing his way purposefully through the crowd. He was tall, dark-skinned, in his mid-thirties. The shouts and screams died away and a hush fell over those immediately
gathered around the vehicle. There was something about this man, a sense of importance, a seriousness and conviction that commanded respect. He drew a short, curved knife from his belt. Without warning and with shocking expertise, he moved quickly between each girl, cutting their throats. There
was stunned silence for a moment and then one or two half-hearted cheers rang out. The two girls slipped limply from the hood of the car and flopped onto the road where they lay, side-by-side, their eyes wide with shock and pain. Moments later they were dead.

The man sheathed his knife and slipped back into the crowd that parted in respectful silence. For him, it wasn’t an act of cruelty. What was cruel was the way the girls had been treated in the last few moments of their lives. The crowd had beaten them and forced themselves inside the two women. That was the behaviour of animals. But what did he expect? The crowd were mainly Infidels from a variety of cultures. They had gathered together and now existed as a single entity that had only one purpose: destruction.

For the time being the man would stay with them. He had their respect and they would do his bidding. He would direct them against the surviving French police and army units until they were either all killed or captured. When it was over, when the violence had abated, he would await the arrival of his Brothers and round up the survivors of this rabble. They would be punished for their act of brutality.

As he strode to the front of the mob, the Renault was set alight. The pack had a leader now, a man who urged them onwards towards the centre of Paris. In less than two hours, the City of Lights had descended into a land of barbarism and death.