Langford eyed them. “You’re advocating that we abandon our allies,” he said. It was so hard to think, so hard to grasp; his head was hurting and he wanted to sleep desperately. “We made commitments…”
Erica spoke sharply. “General… with all due respect, that no longer matters,” she said. “EUROFOR HQ is gone; the Americans think that Islamic rioters destroyed the building after the missiles hit. The united command system is down and there is no hope of getting it back up again. There may be still vast assets on the ground, in theory, but we cannot get them to work together any longer; in reality, there are merely pockets of resistance in a swarm of panicking humanity.”
She took a breath. “Europe has fallen already,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time before the Russians move onwards and complete the task. If we don’t get those men and their equipment back as quickly as we can, whatever it takes, we will lose them, permanently.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Reds Under The Bed
I have here in my hand a list of 205 names that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who, nevertheless, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Hazel had spent the evening in a state of near-terror.
Morningside was normally one of the quietest places in Edinburgh. Where there were places where street fetes and parties were the norm, Morningside operated on the basis of quiet-is-best. Hazel was barely old enough to remember the millennium celebrations at the turn of the century; her husband had been a toddler at the time. Now… now Morningside seemed to be caught in the middle of a nightmare; there were alarms, bangs and shouts going on all over the place… and the sky was burning. Every time she peered towards the centre of the city, she could see smoke rising from the crash site and…
She had been sick, repeatedly, as soon as she had entered the house. Her husband had told her something about emergencies and she hadn’t been a military wife for so long without learning something herself, but chaos and gunfights on the streets of Edinburgh were something new and terrifying. She’d been able to have a brief word with her neighbour, who’d told her that there had been an explosion in Colinton, near the barracks, and she’d almost fainted before realising that Stuart was safe in Poland. She was almost grateful; he would have been spared the chaos on the streets.
The television had failed along with the power. Stuart had given her a small military-issue field radio; one not for transmitting, but receiving; an emergency model that had been popular for a few years after Oakland. The British Government had designated a channel as the Emergency Broadcast Channel, with the advice that people should listen to it as soon as an emergency happened, but every time she’d tried to use it, it had failed. There had been literally nothing on the airwaves; she wasn’t even certain if anyone was in control. There were no policemen patrolling, no soldiers with guns; the civilian population seemed to have been completely abandoned. It reminded her far too much of the Dies the Fire film that she’d watched back when she was dating Stuart Robinson, with the civilians abandoned to whatever fate the gods decreed for them.
The night had passed slowly. There were places in Edinburgh that were rough and violent and she allowed herself to hope that the police and soldiers were dealing with them. Perhaps Morningside was peaceful enough to prevent them from having to make a major deployment, or perhaps… she refused to think about the other possibilities. Her father had been out of town for the day; he was probably worried sick about her, but there would be no way to get back to Edinburgh.
Hazel had paced and paced. The news she had received had made her day, literally, but now she was worried; what happened if she died, in Edinburgh, alone and unnoticed. The government-issue booklet on preparing for emergencies, generally considered to be useless even as toilet paper, had been no help. Stay in your homes unless you are in immediate danger, it warned. Help will come to you.
It had been hours since the air crash and no help had come.
Once again, she picked up her mobile phone in-between dozing fitfully through the night. It was recording no signal, no sign at all that there was anyone else out there. The landline telephone had gone completely as well; she had attempted to fire up the Internet-attached computer and remembered, moments later, that there was a power cut. The battery-operated laptop, connected to the telephone line, failed to connect to the British datanet.
Morning dawned, and with it, footsteps and voices upstairs. Her heart had started to race — Stuart had warned her that when the Police were gone, the looters came out to play — and she had started to head for Stuart’s gun cabinet before realising that it was only the two lodgers, returning home. She was relieved; Stuart had told her the combination to the gun cabinet, but had warned her never to touch the weapons unless it was absolutely desperate. They’d all heard tales of political correctness gone mad, from the driver who had had too much to drink before an accident, and had taken someone to the hospital only to be charged with drunk driving, to the farmer who took pot-shots at thieves, only to be charged with manslaughter.
These days, being a Good Samaritan would only land a person in jail. It wasn’t worth the risk; something important had died in British culture when that landmark case was fought, won and lost. No one would come to help someone screaming for help any more, nor would they even call the police; it just wasn’t the world her father had been born into. The Britain that had stood alone against Hitler was no more.
She opened the door to the back stairwell and walked up quickly. She was more concerned about the two Russians than she was prepared to admit; they were both strangers to the city and the influx of Slavic refugees had not been warmly welcomed by the Scottish public. She would have bet that there was a lot of violence going on; whatever the lying cheating politicians in the Scottish Parliament had claimed about immigrants being useful for the economy, she knew that there weren’t enough jobs for the British, let alone foreigners. She opened the door and peeked into the living room; both men had their backs to her. She coughed…
…And then she saw what they were assembling on the table. It was dark and shiny, glittering metal; it was a weapon of some kind, a genuine military weapon. There was none of the simple workmanlike design of the shotgun, or even of the revolver; the weapon looked intimidating beyond belief. The two men jumped as she coughed, spinning around; Sergey Ossetia grabbed up a pistol from the table and pointed it at her, moving faster than she would have believed possible.
Her mouth fell open. No words emerged.
Rashid Ustinov moved forwards like lightning. Before she could react, he caught her and swung her around, pushing her against the wall. She opened her mouth again to scream and he pushed his hand against her throat, preventing her from breathing in more than a little air. Ossetia snapped something in Russian — she couldn’t understand it at all — and Ustinov snapped something back, then pulled her away from the wall and pushed her over the table, far too close to the strange weapon. Strong hands caught hers and pulled them behind her — she couldn’t even gasp in pain — and then tape was wrapped around her wrists, securing her hands behind her. A moment later, her legs were taped together as well and Ustinov lowered her gently to the floor.
Hazel fought for breath as two sets of cold blue eyes stared down at her. She was terrifyingly aware of her own vulnerability, her own weakness; they could kill her at any moment and she couldn’t even crawl away. She opened and closed her mouth, feeling silly even as she tried to regain control of her body; she wanted to scream, but she didn’t dare.