“I doubt there’ll be any of the distribution terminals left, but we can try local garages to start with.”
“Nearest terminal from here is probably Bristol way — Avonmouth,” Rolly informed them.
“There’s always the privately owned pipelines. The terminals may be destroyed, but fuel could be trapped in between pumping stations.”
“Private pipelines, Plato?”
“Yeah, Glen, private pipelines. There’s one owned by Esso, for example, that runs from Fawley to Birmingham. And this,” he slapped a map down on the foldaway table in front of them, “is a map of where they all are.”
“How the hell did you get a hold of that?” asked Greg.
“Do you remember that detachment I was on, testing Government anti-terrorist measures?”
“Yeah, a two-week holiday more like,” mocked Greg.
“I never said it wasn’t.” Plato smiled. “But I pretty much know the ins and outs of the private and Government pipelines in the UK.”
“Sorry to bring you guys back down to earth, but we’ll have to settle for any petrol station we can find in the short term.” Glen looked at his watch which read 0530. “Time we moved out.”
The troop packed up and were on their way by 0600. Taking the smaller country roads, they followed the route outlined by Plato, passing through the M50 underpass without incident. They discovered a route across the River Severn. No effort had been made to control the crossing. In fact, they saw no other signs of life, and the houses on the roadside they did pass looked to have all their windows shattered, were covered in thick layers of dust, and appeared unoccupied. By 0825, the troop was in the vicinity of the next motorway, the M5. Three hundred metres before they came up against the M5, before the road climbed up and over the motorway, they turned off into the undergrowth alongside the carriageway, making sure the vehicle and trailer were well hidden and couldn’t be seen from the road.
“You two, stay and watch the vehicle. Rolly and I will do a recce.”
“I’ll get a brew on then,” suggested Plato.
“How long?” asked Greg.
“Give us an hour,” replied Glen. “That way, if there’s anything of interest, we’ll have time to take a look. No comms, lets keep it low-key.”
“Roger that.”
“Ready, Rolly?”
“Yeah, ready for a leg stretch.” Rolly, lean and rangy, found the confines of the Land Rover constricting for his legs and always welcomed the opportunity to give them a stretch. He grabbed his C8 carbine and exited through the rear door. Glen left the front passenger seat and joined him outside. Like Rolly, Plato also used a C8 carbine, but with Elcan optics and an L17A1 grenade launcher slung beneath it. Glen, on the other hand, preferred his HK G36. Greg’s weapon of choice was the LMG36, a light machine gun with a heavy barrel, bipod and high capacity magazines.
“We’d better mask up. No telling what’s around here.”
“Sound idea, boss.”
Both pulled on their respirators and then dragged their camouflaged hoods around them, ensuring their faces were well protected. Their camouflaged NBC jackets were zipped up tight. They were glad of the extra warmth: there was a biting chill in the air. Glen looked up at the slate grey skies. The cloud looked low, dull and menacing, and not a single shaft of sunlight could be seen. In fact, no glow from the sun was visible at all. He shivered.
“Getting colder, boss.”
“Seems like it, Rolly. Let’s go.”
They left Greg and Plato to guard the Land Rover and all of their gear, and headed east through the undergrowth, climbing the bank that led up to the road. Within a matter of minutes, they were at the edge of the motorway, a steel crash barrier across their front protecting the northbound carriageway. The two soldiers crouched down in the bushes and listened, the only sound their laboured breathing as they sucked air through the filters of their respirators. With the carriageway slightly above them, they could see very little of the road, but the tops of the nearest vehicles were in their line of sight.
Glen nodded, got up from the crouch, and moved forward, climbing the side of the shallow embankment, Rolly watching his back. To his right, Glen could make out the flyover they would eventually cross that supported the minor road over the six lanes of the M5 below it. In front of him, on the hard shoulder, on the other side of the crash barrier, a line of dust-encrusted cars came into view. Immediately in front of him was a people carrier, black privacy glass in the rear side windows. There was no sign of a driver or front passenger. Not that he expected there would be: the car and the thousands of others strewn along the motorway had been abandoned for weeks. He looked over his shoulder, checked Rolly’s position, then indicated he was crossing over and Rolly was to follow. Glen pulled his HK into his shoulder and lifted his right leg, stepping over the crash barrier but not taking his eyes off the vehicles in front. He walked in between the people carrier and an old VW Passat to his right. Both were pushed hard up against the crash barrier.
Rolly joined him, and they scanned the area around them, the reason for the crush of vehicles obvious. It was as if the entire three lanes of traffic had been violently bulldozed across the motorway. The majority of the vehicles, particularly those that must have originally been in the fast lane of the northbound carriageway, had been overturned and thrown up against the other two lanes of traffic. Both of the men moved towards the central reservation, having to weave through the tight gaps, occasionally having to climb over a crashed car’s bonnet before reaching the central reservation and turning left, peering into the empty cars, vans, trucks, and even a bus. On closer inspection, some of the paint on the cars was burnt and blistered. Glen signalled to Rolly, then crossed to the other side of the central reservation, weaving his way across the southbound lanes, where the cars travelling south had also been shoved across the motorway, crushed up against the central barrier. Along the stretch, a large number of vehicles had been flipped over and now straddled the centre of the motorway.
Glen pulled out his binoculars, sensing Rolly alongside him, watching over both of them whilst Glen was distracted by his current task. He lifted the binos to the front of his mask and scanned the city of Cheltenham to the south-east. The devastation in the northern part of the Cheltenham, the Kingsditch Trading Estate, was plain to see, and, as he scanned to the right, the blackened remains of the housing estates stood out like saw-toothed basalt. Even further to the right, very little could be determined. The site of the Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) had received a direct hit from a one-megaton nuclear warhead. It confirmed the reason for the state the cars were in. To their south, he was sure that Gloucester, along with its airport, would have also been a target of Russian anger.
“How’s it looking?”
Glen handed him the binos and took up a watch position while Rolly did a sweep of the devastation of what was once a spa town, the home of the flagship horse race, the Gold Cup steeplechase.
“See where GCHQ used to be? That would have been high up on the Soviet’s target list.”
“That’s why we have all the traffic,” responded Rolly. “Poor buggers were trying to get away, knowing Cheltenham was fucked. Didn’t do them any good though. Couldn’t have been much of a warning.”
“Same for them all, mate. Motorway is chock-a-block in both directions. Poor bastards from the north have been running south, and this other lot trying to get as far north as possible.”
Rolly lowered the binos and pointed at the wrecks. “By the look of these, they were hit by both the blast and thermal wave.”
“Probably a one-meg, half a meg at least.”