He had time only to mutter to himself. “What in hells name is that?” before the Gerald Ford slammed into the burning hulk of the USS Hallemville.
CHAPTER FIVE
The new day heralded a foot on the next rung up the ladder, in Ms Danyella Foxten-Billings career in politics. She had been absent from her trendy London Mews since the start of the war, staying at an out of the way house in Wales and only returning the previous day to attend the funeral of Matthew St Reever’s, the man who had taken a job previously promised to her.
The ceremony had been a solemn affair, as funerals tend to be, on a cold grey day, in the midst of the snows thaw, but it had allowed her to wear black, and she knew that she looked good in black.
She had dabbed away non-existent tears during the ceremony and at its end had uttered insincere platitudes to Reever’s widow, a woman who in her opinion most certainly did not suit black, it just accentuated her plain looks.
It had been after she’d left the widow’s side that the new Prime Minister had approached her with the offer to take up the now vacant post.
Two hours later, having seen his wife safely off he had joined her at her Mews, but she had made him put it in writing and telephone his press secretary with instructions for the press release announcing it, before she had allowed him to undress her and carry her to the bed to seal the deal. She’d kept the expensive black lace stockings and suspender belt on though, and had admired her reflection in a large wall mirror during the act, looking damned good in black as she’d literally ridden a column of power.
This morning she was lying in bed pondering how to make her mark from the onset, when the doorbell rang.
Her lover of the previous night had left in the early hours so she slipped from the bed, pulling on a midnight blue silk wrap as she headed for the door.
Police Sergeant Harry Chapman had been outside the Mews since shortly after midnight, having been roused from his own bed by a phone call. His instructions were to have his new principle up north by noon, and there was a flight awaiting them at RAF Northolt. Having seen no signs of movement within the address he thought that now was as good a time as any to make introductions, and besides which he was bursting for a slash.
The woman who answered the door was probably even more attractive than her photographs indicated, but then the wild haired look will do that to a girl.
“Good morning Ms Foxten-Billings.” He held out his warrant card for her to examine. “I am Sergeant Chapman; I’m the skipper on your close protection team. We have instructions to get you on a flight that leaves in two hours from Northolt.”
Danyella looked him up and down, noting the creases in his suit and that he would need to shave before too long. She wasn’t impressed and didn’t give a damn that he and the rest of the officers had spent a cold uncomfortable night for her benefit.
She smiled coldly at him.
“Thank you, I will be ready in under an hour… is there anything else?”
Harry was slow on the uptake this morning, or he wouldn’t have asked if he could possibly use her lavatory.
Danyella’s smile remained fixed.
“And I suppose you wouldn’t object to using my kitchen to get a coffee for yourself and the boys while I’m getting ready?”
Harry smiled back gratefully.
“That would be very generous of you, thank you.” But his principle shut the door firmly in his face before he could take a step forward across the threshold.
The incident was dismissed from her mind as she began to get herself ready.
Her mind was busy, not with how she would measure up to the very critical job she now held, but with how to make the world know that she had arrived. She needed something big, something historic, but what?
She hadn’t been exaggerating when she had said she would be ready in so short a time. Her suitcases had been packed since word had arrived of St Reever’s demise. She needed only to shower, dress, and apply the minimum of make-up before she would summon the gun-toting oafs to fetch her bags.
Having turned on her shower she made herself a coffee and was heading back to the bathroom when she tripped on a jumbled pile of newspapers beside the door.
The previous day she had been forced to lean on the door, to force it open because of the weight of accumulated broadsheets and tabloids that lay below the letterbox. She had kicked them aside in a flurry of newsprint, and left them where they lay as she had been more concerned with looking good at the funeral, than with housekeeping, but now with annoyance she glared at the items whilst stripping off her coffee splashed wrap.
Her house mistress at Roedean would have been aghast at the utterances that emitted from Danyella’s mouth, but then Danyella stopped in mid-sentence and crouched down, studying an article that had caught her eye. The house in Wales had been too far from a newsagent for daily deliveries, and her news intake had been exclusively the television, she realised now she had missed all but the main news stories.
In what was normally one the most bleak and arid regions of the planet; the crisp white snow had given the mountains a picture postcard air. Richard Dewar paused to allow the single line of soldiers to close up, and took the opportunity to admire the surroundings, but it was a momentary event.
So far, since dropping into the high valley, they had covered a mere seven miles as the crow flies, but the majority of the daylight hours had been spent on a mainly vertical face that had one bitch of an overhang between the third and fourth belay’s. Major Dewar had led the climb with Corporal Alladay bringing up the rear and retrieving as many of their limited supply of pitons as he could.
Garfield Brooks and Shippey-Romhead joined the Royal Marine Major, breathing heavily as they trudged through the yard deep snow to his side. Richard was munching away on a chocolate bar when they reached him, and he broke off some cubes of the fruit and nut confectionary and handed them across.
“I wonder how many hundreds of years ago it last snowed here?” he asked them.
Garfield glanced around, they were on a narrow plateau with just a low ridge separating them from the valley beyond, and it looked to him what he thought a mountain range should look like.
“Isn’t this usual?”
Richard knew what the Green Beret was thinking.
“Not at this altitude, these are just the babies of the range, the big ones are further west… starting about forty or so miles off, they have permanent glaciers on the highest ones. I am a little worried by what a sudden thaw will do here; it could sweep a lot of accumulated loose earth and rock into the valleys so we could have landslides… and flash floods down below will be a nightmare.”
Neither of the other officers had given any thought to that aspect, the messed up weather patterns would have a knock-on effect that would have to be considered globally, for years to come.
“Have you thought why the Chinese built their sites here… apart from the security aspect of being in a remote area, and defensibility of course?”
“I guess that would be the geology and the weather, no earthquakes, volcanic activity, and no floods or snowfall to worry about.” Shippey-Romhead ventured.
“So if you were the commander of this region, and you saw what we are seeing… ” Richard asked, “… What would you do?”
Garfield swore under his breath.