The voice was faint. “This is command,” it said. “Please identify yourself.”
“This is Inspector David Briggs,” Briggs said. The voice sounded oddly familiar. “I’m at Downing Street and we need help.”
“This is Major-General Langford,” the voice said. It became much clearer within moments as both units strove to boost the signal and beat the jamming. Briggs remembered a tall thin man from the PJHQ; he had been wondering what had happened to Northwood, even to the point of considering sending one of the soldiers there to find out. “Please report on your situation.”
“Bloody desperate,” Briggs said. The fact that they had made any sort of contact was a massive boost to his morale. Judging from Roach’s face, the same thought had occurred to him; he was smiling openly. “It seems as if we’re in the middle of a fucking war.”
“We are,” Langford said flatly. “I need to know; what’s happening there?”
“We have the fires more or less halted now,” Briggs said. It had only taken a couple of hours to bring them under some form of control. “The entire areas a wreck; we only pulled out a few dozen survivors and they were all on the edge of the impact area. None of them are important people, sir; the Houses of Parliament have been utterly destroyed.”
There was a long pause. “There’s no hope?” Langford asked finally. “None at all?”
“No,” Briggs said. He closed his eyes. “Sir, just who is in charge of the country?”
“Me, it seems,” Langford said. Briggs heard the bitterness in his voice and shuddered. “For the moment, you have been confirmed commander of all of the police and other emergency services in London; New Scotland Yard appears to be gone, along with the PJHQ. We’ll sort out seniority later. Is there a military officer there?”
“Yes,” Briggs said. He passed the microphone to Roach. “You’d better tell him about the sniper as well.”
Briggs reported in clear and concise terms, sparing nothing, from the details of the missile impact at the barracks to the snipers and gunfire that burst out from time to time over the city. Briggs had studied the snipers that had cropped up in America; a single man with a high-powered rifle and no sense of morals could bring an entire city to a halt for hours. How many were loose within London?
“I see,” Langford said finally. “can you get a bearing on the source of the jamming?”
Briggs looked at Page. “Yes, sir,” he said. He tapped commands into the system and recited a bearing. “That’s the rough bearing.”
There was a pause. “The Russian Embassy,” Langford said, after a long moment. Briggs realised that Langford must have taken a bearing from somewhere else and used it to triangulate the source of the jamming. “It figures.”
Briggs rubbed his bald head. “Sir, do you think that the Russians are behind all of this?”
“I think that they’re the ones doing the jamming,” Langford said. “That may not be damning, but any court of law would consider it highly suspicious behaviour at the best of times. Sergeant Roach?”
Roach straightened, as if they were face to face. “Yes, sir?”
Langford sounded too tired to be stern. “Sergeant, how many men do you have now who are armed?”
“Fifty-seven,” Roach said. They had been trickling in from the remains of the other barracks; most of them had been helpful, both in providing security and in caring for the injured. Some of them had been veterans of actual fighting; they had understood some things that civilians would never grasp. “I don’t have a complete unit, just dribs and drabs.”
“It’ll have to do,” Langford said. “Take thirty men and take the Russian Embassy; shut the jamming down, any means necessary. Tell them that we will try to treat them with the standard respect for diplomatic representatives, sneak attack notwithstanding, but if they don’t shut down the transmitter and surrender, we’ll bomb the embassy.”
“Understood, sir,” Roach said. “I won’t let you down.”
He marched out of the mobile command centre, shouting orders to his men. “General, we need support out here,” Briggs said. “Just what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Langford admitted. “Most of the command network has been shattered; what reports we are receiving are frequently confusing and contradictory. Once the jamming has been removed, we can hopefully start finding out just what is going on, and then somehow take whatever action we need to take.”
“I understand,” Briggs said. Several more police officers had arrived, none of them outranking him. London had to be in chaos; the streets were crowded at the best of times, and now it looked as if half the city was on fire. People would be fleeing the city for the countryside, if they had anywhere to go, and looters would be coming out of their holes, intent on enriching themselves. “I just wish I had more men.”
The Russian Embassy, like every other Embassy that felt itself to be under threat from terrorists, was much stronger than it appeared from the outside. Ambassador Konstantin Molotov — he had assumed the surname in honour of his private hero — knew that it could be held for at least an hour against a determined force, such as a Chechen resistance group. The thought of what happened to Russians who fell into their hands would keep the guards — all of whom were far more dangerous than their resumes suggested — fighting well past all hope being gone. Molotov also knew that the Embassy, like all embassies, was dependent upon the goodwill of the local population — or at least its government.
Molotov, like all diplomats, had been furious over the fate of the American embassies in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. He had been one of the people calling upon the President to support the American War in revenge for the decision of the Jihadists to move against the embassies, which were intended to be sanctuaries. The discovery that the embassy was at the centre of Russian war plans hadn’t pleased him, not least because, as Ambassador, he could be made to pay the price for the actions of the FSB agents operating behind enemy lines. The sealed orders had been clear; keep the jamming going as long as possible, then request safe passage out of Europe…
And so Molotov had heaved his bulk down to the gates. “This is Russian territory,” he said, as calmly as he could. The young man facing him didn’t look too steady; he was holding a weapon as if it was a deadly snake. “You have no right to force admittance.”
“You have launched a war against us,” the British soldier said. Molotov saw the blood trickling down his face and shuddered; it was a far cry from any world he was personally familiar with, nothing to do with the soft words and softer moves of diplomacy. “You are engaged in hostile acts!”
“I deny all such accusations,” Molotov said. He realised instantly that it was the wrong thing to say; the young man brought his weapon up and pointed it right at his chest. “Threatening an Ambassador…”
“You’ve killed the fucking Prime Minister,” the British soldier said. “Ambassador, you will open the embassy and order your men to surrender.”
The Russian soldiers lifted their own weapons. Molotov waved at them frantically to lower them. “And what happens if I refuse?” He asked. “Russia has a right to guard her territory…”
“If you refuse, my men will keep you trapped in here while a fighter-bomber drops a bomb on your head,” the British soldier said. “The jamming will be shut down and you will all be killed.” He ran a hand across his brow. “Choose, Ambassador; I have no more time!”
Molotov took a breath. “In that case, I will open the embassy,” he said. The prospects of bullets flying anywhere near him terrified him. “I must inform you that my government will protest in the fullest possible terms to your Prime Minister, or his replacement, the United Nations, the European Union and consider taking the strongest action against your personally.”