“Oh, shit,” he breathed.
The entire row of embassies was under attack. Terrorists, fighters, insurgents, whatever they were… they had all taken over some of the nearby buildings and were using them to fire down into the diplomatic establishments. The American flag was burning; he could see fires flickering in and out of the building as the terrorists concentrated their fire on the Americans. The marines were returning fire with enthusiasm, but Fanaroff could see that the situation was hopeless; the insurgents had mortars and were preparing to start blasting the Americans out of their embassy. The Mexican and Japanese embassies were burning completely; a Japanese girl, half-naked, was being chased around in circles by a group of laughing young men. The Turks…
Fanaroff felt sick, again. There was a large Palestinian population in Brussels, one that campaigned relentlessly for a return to Palestine and the extermination of Israel and America… and Turkey. No Arab would forget that the Turks represented a threat on more grounds than one; not only were they the most loyal allies that Israel had, but they were also an ideological threat. As Muslims, the Turks represented a different call on young Muslim men, one that offered an alternative to that preached by fundamentalists. There could be no mercy… and none had been shown; the male Turkish embassy staff had been crucified. The women…
He looked around, to try to avoid the sight, and saw flames rising up from the harbour. There had been a strike, he remembered; the Russian Gazprom Corporation had had some of its people demanding extra pay before they unloaded the vast quantities of LNG they carried. He cursed under his breath; it seemed hopeless. The chaos couldn’t go on forever, but while it did, escaping the city would prove difficult.
Fanaroff pulled himself back and scrambled down the ladder, holding his pistol in one hand. Saundra glanced up in relief; he explained in a few quick words what had happened and what they were going to do. She didn’t argue, although she was obviously ashamed at leaving their friends behind; Fanaroff knew that there was nothing they could do for the people in the embassy now.
“They won’t have done all of this in isolation,” Fanaroff muttered, as they ran. “They’ll have done something to the bases in Belgium and perhaps France and Germany as well… shit, if they have half the radicals up in arms, they’ll have the entire continent ablaze.”
A distant explosion underlined his words. “We need to find safety and report in,” he said. “Have you ever been to the red light district?”
Saundra gaped at him. “Sir?”
There was another brief rattle of gunpowder, and then a large explosion; Fanaroff wondered if the Marines had blown up the embassy rather than let the American staff be torn apart by… well, whatever the hell they were. He knew more about the military situation than Saundra; she could hope that Uncle Sam would save them, but Fanaroff knew better. The United States was fully committed to Korea and the Middle East… and was no longer in the habit of helping Europe to dig itself out of a hole.
“They brought this on themselves anyway,” he muttered. “I went with a guy called Lombardi; God knows what’s happened to him. There are plenty of whorehouses that will give a fellow board and lodgings for the night if he has a girl with him; I think it actually has something to do with Arabic boys, girls, and the reaction of their families if they were caught together.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe with me,” he said. Insanely, he felt better than he had in years. “All you have to do is pretend to be my lover.”
Saundra laughed. “I draw the line at faking orgasms,” she said. Somewhere along the line, the differences in rank had vanished; shared experiences did that in the best of units. “I’ll just simper and say ‘honey’ a lot.”
“As long as it’s convincing,” Fanaroff said. They passed a set of hastily boarded-up shops; the owners were hiding from the people who had once been their customers. Fanaroff didn’t give much for their chances; as soon as the embassies fell, the mob would have lost its focus and would come looking for another one. “I think we’re going to have to hide until we get back in touch with home.”
Chapter Seventeen: State of Play
My duty is not affected by what others may or may not do to discharge their own.
London, England
They reconvened two hours afterwards.
He had argued, of course; Langford had never seen himself as having a political career, not when a military background was the kiss of death in many parts of the country. He also had a deep respect for democracy, the same democracy that he had tried to export to Iraq and several places in Africa… and a military dictator was anything, but democratic. He had been briefed, years ago, on some of the older war plans that the British Government had drawn up when it had had to come to terms with the possibility of nuclear war, but so many of them had been… hopeless. Victory was never an option.
Major Erica Yuppie had been determined… and it was easy to admire her determination to ensure that she carried out her duty, whatever it took. He had looked into her service record — the computers in the CJHQ might have been a closed system, but they had been detailed and read-only — and he could see the signs of an officer with rare promise. She had been an infantrywoman before transferring to higher office, showing skills that would have taken her far, perhaps even to the post he held. Instead, she had been asked to spend her days on a lonely vigil, waiting for the day that Britain was under such threat that the Emergency Protocols had to be activated.
It still stunned him that he had known nothing about it; of the sixty-odd people who knew, fifty of them worked in the CJHQ and had the highest security clearance in Britain. Twenty-three of them had actually been on duty when the missiles started to fall; they had handled themselves very well under their first real test. Erica had recalled the remainder of her staff at once, but as she herself admitted, it wasn't exactly certain that all of them would get the message in time. The communications network was in total disarray… and they dared not risk a security leak.
Erica’s concerns had made sense once he had examined the details of the CJHQ itself. If Briggs was to be believed, the Russian missiles had made short work of the bunker and tunnel complex under Ten Downing Street, shattering a network that had been designed to defeat a nuclear attack. The CJHQ was flimsy by comparison, its survival assured more by secrecy than any actual protection; an enemy force that stumbled across it would have little difficulty actually taking the place, although he suspected that Erica would blow the compound up rather than let an enemy take it.
He stood up and paced, glaring down at the briefcase on his desk. There were no more than five copies of the complete Emergency Protocols in existence… and he was looking at one of them, the others would have burned with Whitehall and the Prime Minister. He had read them, seeing the mindset of a different era in the cold dispassionate words of a defence planner, a man who had grappled with the complexities of nuclear war. He had said, clearly, that nuclear war would destroy the government… and the senior officer who survived — or was in direct contact with British forces — held authority. He hadn’t planned for a precision strike, like the Russians had carried out, but otherwise the situation fitted, at least until new elections were held. Langford privately resolved to ensure that they were carried out as soon as possible.