Invasion (34 page)

‘Peter. Glad you made it.’

‘Good to see you, Harry.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘For some time, now. The meeting at the Press Club overran. I got your message and was on my way over to Downing Street when the first bombs went off. I was taken to Northolt immediately and flown here.’

‘What about the rest of the Cabinet?’

Noonan’s
face
darkened. ‘No
word, I’m afraid. The
attacks have been devastating and communications have been practically non-existent. We can only pray they’re safe.’ Noonan paused, laying a hand on Harry’s shoulder. ‘Harry, about Anna
-
’

‘Thank you, Peter,’ he cut in. ‘What about your family?’

Noonan lowered his voice. ‘I’ve been very lucky. Jenny’s
at the house in Gloucester and Toby’s in his Bristol dorm. Arrangements have been made to move them north.’

‘North?’

‘I think we should get this meeting started, Harry. There are a lot of blanks to be filled in.’

Noonan took care of the introductions around the table. Most were members of the armed forces, plus a few mid-level civil servants from London who were fortunate enough to have been evacuated. Harry spent a few moments listening to their tales of escape from the capital and realised how close some of them had come to death. Not for them the services of a stealth helicopter. Most had escaped by car, a terrifying ordeal by some accounts. Many who’d started the journey west hadn’t made it, their fate unknown. Harry took a seat along the table and everybody
sat down. The Deputy PM got proceedings underway.

‘Well, Harry, things don’t look good. As you’re aware, we are now at war with the State of Arabia and God only knows why. It began at six o’clock yesterday evening with a series of coordinated terror attacks, focussed primarily in the South East. Casualty predictions are high, both civilian and military. A large portion of domestic utilities have been shut down – gas, electricity, telephone exchanges, even water supplies. Luckily for us, the West Country seems to have escaped the violence, although two car bombs were detonated in Bristol.’

‘Jesus,’ whispered Harry.

‘Now, as far as communications
are concerned, all media channels have ceased to operate for the time being. Diplomatically, we’ve had no word from the continent, but our communications people here have picked up thousands of garbled messages from the European mainland. Seems they’re suffering the same crisis as us.’

‘What’s the status of our armed forces?’

Noonan nodded to the senior Army representative. ‘General Bashford will give you the military brief. General?’

Major-General Julian Bashford pushed his chair back and stood. He was a tall, thin man with wispy white hair, dressed in combat fatigues. And he looked exhausted, decided Harry. Bashford cleared his throat several times and shuffled the papers
at his fingertips, seemingly lost in thought. After a moment, he motioned for the lights in the room to be dimmed and the in-built table display glowed brightly in the gloom. It showed several large-scale maps of the UK and the European mainland.

‘Prime Minister, we intercepted a radio message
at approximately twenty-hundred hours yesterday evening from a British Army regiment
in the Cologne area. It was a short message, on an open channel. They reported being under heavy attack, that the camp was in chaos, and personnel had scattered into the surrounding streets. A large number of people had also been killed. They also reported
seeing at least a dozen Arabian heavy-lift aircraft flying low over their position, inbound towards Cologne airport. We lost communications shortly afterwards.’

Harry twisted his hands on the table. ‘My God.’

‘There’s more, I’m afraid.’ Bashford touched the screen and the display changed to a map of the British Isles. ‘Many of our main garrisons here in England have been hit, with many vehicles and equipment destroyed. According to survivors, a large number of attacks started inside the bases. Terrorists,
posing as
civilian contractors
and suchlike. Surviving personnel
have abandoned many of these bases and scattered far and wide, taking as much of their inventory
as possible.’

Noonan cleared his throat. ‘Base security was an issue to be addressed in the next Defence review.’

‘Well,
the horse has firmly bolted on that one,’
growled Harry. ‘Please continue, General.’

‘As we re-establish comms, we’re ordering all surviving units to make for the Scottish border. There’s only been one attack there
,
a bomb, which detonated in Holyrood.’

‘Dear God.’

‘The First Minister was killed, along with most of his Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers. Lord Advocate Matheson is the
highest-ranking
official left and is busy forming an emergency administration. They’ve stated that, in light of the circumstances, all executive authority
will be passed to you.’

‘I see.’

‘Apart from that single attack it appears
the rest of Scotland has been unaffected, confirming that it was a decapitation exercise. Instead, Arabian forces are concentrating their efforts in the south. We have a direct link here with SCOTFOR military HQ outside Edinburgh. Scottish border troops have been deployed and Matheson has issued a general call-up for Territorial and Reservist personnel right across Scotland. They’ve
also closed the border to civilian traffic. Scotland will be sealed up tight.’

‘A wise move,’ Harry commented.

‘As I’ve mentioned, our southern garrisons have been hit hard, but initial reports are not as bad as we feared. As luck would have it, UK Land Forces have been running a series of major exercises and a good percentage of our troops were already deployed into the field, mainly across Salisbury Plain. Those units have been ordered to head west. Surviving rear party and HQ staff at Bulford, Tidworth and Aldershot garrisons have been ordered to do the same. The plan was to shorten our defensive line and create a buffer zone across the West Country from which we could organise our defences, using Alternate One as our main base of operations.
’

‘Was?’

‘The situation
is fluid, Prime Minister. Let me explain.’ Bashford touched the screen, increasing magnification to reveal a detailed view of western England.
‘Here we are, deep in the Mendips. The northern most point of the defensive line is here, at Upper Seagry, a village just north of the M4 motorway. With the intelligence we’re getting, the Arabians like to use motorways, which makes sense considering the amount of men and material they’re moving.’

‘What about their air force?’ Harry asked.

‘They know we have anti-air capability, and we’ve already shot down a small number of enemy aircraft. At the same time, they’re probably aware we have little or no air forces to counter their threat. They’ll be cautious about sending manned air assets against us in the short term and, besides, their ground forces outnumber us massively. We believe that, when the attack comes, it will be a mixture of conventional ground forces supplemented with unmanned reconnaissance vehicles and long-range artillery. To counter that, our defensive line will continue down here to Sherbourne in the south and then cut across the A352, the A37 and the A356, just in case they try to bypass our southern flank by hugging the south coast and turning north. Our defences will be arrayed along this line, facing east.’

‘I see,’ Harry mumbled. Truth was, he was finding it increasingly difficult to relate what the General was saying to events outside. The man was describing the crisis as calmly
as if he were giving a lecture at a military college. ‘Looks like we’ll be spread pretty thin,’ he noted. Even a civilian like Harry could see that the area the General was proposing to cover was vast.

‘Correct. And because of our lack of resources, we’re concentrating our high-mobility armoured units at road junctions, bridges and other major choke points. We’re
also using the terrain to our advantage by placing fighting vehicles and jeep-mounted anti-armour weapons in other strategic positions, where they can engage the enemy from cover and then escape across country. Some of our Apaches survived the initial attacks too, although they have little ordinance. Still,
they can add something to our strategic capability and give the bad guys pause for thought. The order of the day will be to get in, land a solid punch, and get out again. Experienced
teams can use this tactic repeatedly, causing advancing enemy units considerable delay.’

‘How much time have we got?’

Bashford frowned. ‘Not much. We’re talking days, rather than weeks.’

Harry studied the map.
Days
. Then what? The countryside laid to waste? Between Alternate One and Bashford’s defensive
line there were dozens of towns, both small and large, not to mention countless villages and farms. ‘You’re missing something.’ Harry got to his feet, placing his hands on the table. He looked at the faces around him. ‘What about the civilians? What provision are we making for them when this attack comes?’ Blank faces stared back at him and Harry shook his head. ‘What you’re proposing here is unacceptable, General. A major battle across the English countryside, with hundreds of thousands of civilians in the firing line? Jesus Christ, it’ll be a slaughterhouse.’

Noonan held up his hand. ‘Hear the General out, Harry.’

Bashford cleared his throat. ‘It’s something the people in this room have also considered at great length, Prime Minister. You’re absolutely right. The truth is, if we made a stand we’d be neutralised in a few days, resulting in unacceptable civilian casualties. The defence line is in place specifically to buy us time. The real plan is to evacuate.’

Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘Evacuate?’

‘It’s imperative
we get you away from here as soon as possible,’ urged Noonan.

‘The country needs a leader now. Without
some form of government and a familiar face at the head of that administration, we stand little chance of negotiating any kind of settlement. And we’ll have to negotiate, Harry, sooner or later.’

Harry nodded grimly. The Arabians would want to deal, wouldn’t they? But then again, the timing and ferocity of the attacks displayed a frightening lack of concern for the level of casualties in Whitehall and elsewhere. Perhaps the Arabians had no intention of negotiating at all. The thought troubled Harry deeply.

‘Where are we being evacuated to, General?’

‘Scotland. There’s a little-known facility in the Highlands called McIntyre Castle. It’s on the west coast, in Argyll, very secluded, surrounded by mountains and forests. It was last used by the military during the Second World War to train deep-cover
S.O.E. agents, but it’s always been on the books, so to speak. There’ll be a skeleton
staff there, plus a small security force. The rest of the operational team will join SCOTFOR HQ outside Edinburgh.’

‘How long until the border is secured?’ Harry asked.

‘In the short-term, engineers are constructing razor wire fencing and observation towers, and every cross-border road is being blocked
with heavy vehicles or
concrete
obstacles, backed up with infantry and light-armour support. In addition, anti-aircraft and anti-tank units are being sited at strategic points all along the line. Multiple-launch rocket vehicles and conventional
artillery are also being drawn up and sited deep into Scotland to give us some long-range firepower. They also have helicopter patrols operating up to three thousand feet, and what fighters we’ve been able to muster are flying combat air patrols above that. The more troops we relocate north, the more chance we have of preserving Scotland.’

‘What about the troops here at Alternate One?’ he asked. ‘What happens to them?’

‘I’m holding a briefing this afternoon for senior officers,’ explained Bashford.

‘Part of that briefing will include plans for a phased withdrawal. When the time is right, our men and women will withdraw to the coast and board the ships.’

‘Ships? We’re leaving by sea?’

‘Not us, just the bulk of our forces. The Navy has four ships that will dock at Teignmouth in Devon when they receive the order. We have two supply ships, a frigate and a small minesweeper at our disposal. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to take any of our larger equipment or vehicles, but we can probably squeeze around ten thousand troops in total aboard all the ships. We’ll load a majority of them during the hours of darkness, setting sail as we fill the vessels. The ships will then head north into the Irish Sea and rendezvous at Stranraer, on the west coast of Scotland.’

‘How many soldiers do we have out there on the defensive line now?’ asked
Harry.

‘Around four thousand. There are approximately
another eight or nine thousand troops being held in reserve areas, ready to counter a surprise attack should it materialise.’

‘And what about our air force?’ A quick glance at the Royal Air Force Commodore told its own story. The man sat there with a permanent frown, his eyes cast down towards the display.