They seem to be getting an idea of what makes us tick, he thought, sourly. God knows how long they were watching us from space. They don’t seem to be particularly subtle at all — do as we want or we will kill you. And if you vanish, we will kill your family…
The garage seemed deserted, but he clutched his baton tightly as he pushed at the door. There was a single click and then the door swung open, revealing a deserted interior. It looked as if someone had been busy — there were tools scattered everywhere — but they had clearly abandoned the building. Judging from the skill shown by the bomb-maker, he’d probably assumed that the suicide bomber would have been caught on camera and traced back to his base. Someone from the Regiment would have known just how the Met used the CCTV network to look backwards in time and try to localise a terrorist base. Or catch bad parkers, for that matter.
He beckoned two other officers inside and they spread out, checking for traps while carefully not touching anything that might carry fingerprints or DNA evidence. The pit below where the van had rested was deeper than he expected, suggesting that the original owner of the garage must have been a very tall man. Or perhaps he’d just been an expert at scrambling out of pits. There was no sign of a ladder or any other way back to the ground floor.
“In here,” one of the officers muttered. “I found papers.”
Terry followed his gaze. The back of the garage was a small office, stinking of half-eaten kebabs and burgers. Judging from the smell, the food had to have been decomposing for several days, perhaps a week. London’s endless series of kebab houses had been shutting down as supplies from outside the city tapered off, leaving the population dependent upon the tasteless alien muck. It struck him as odd that an SAS soldier would leave contaminated food behind, but maybe it was intended to deter intruders. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to go into the office without a gas mask and perhaps a flamethrower. The forensic team were going to have to wear full NBC suits if they wanted to pull anything useful out of the room.
“Maybe they left something behind to tell us where they were going,” the officer said. Terry doubted it. It was rather more likely that the garage’s owner had left the papers behind, wherever he was now. Teams of researchers were already looking through the records to see what had happened to him — maybe he’d registered with the aliens — but Terry wasn’t too hopeful that they would lead the Met to the bomb-maker. It was far more likely that it would be nothing more than a wild goose chase. “Or perhaps…”
He opened one of the drawers, a second before Terry could shout out a warning. There was a second click, followed by a wave of fire that blasted out and into the garage. Terry yelled in pain as his skin burned, even as he stumbled backwards trying to find the way out. The flames were spreading with terrifying speed, suggesting that the entire garage had been rigged to catch fire quickly and efficiently. He felt as if he’d caught fire himself… somehow, gasping for breath, he managed to find his way out without falling into the repair pit. Another officer wasn’t so lucky; Terry watched in horror as he fell, just before the flames roared into the pit. They seemed to be almost crawling across the ground towards the policemen. He heard a scream that cut off seconds later.
Outside, he could hear the sounds of fire engines already on their way. It was far too late. The flames had consumed much of the evidence, if there had ever been any evidence at all — it was, he realised grimly, a trap intended to kill a number of policemen as well as wipe the slate clean. It was clear that the bomb-maker had a nasty sense of humour.
His skin still burning, he found a place to sit and waited for the fire brigade. Somehow, he was sure that they wouldn’t find anything in the ruins of the garage. The bomber had gotten clean away.
Robin glanced up at his small force of policemen. They were all wearing riot-control gear, which should provide some protection if the situation turned violent. And it might well turn violent — Londoners weren’t used to seeing hundreds of people torn from their homes and transferred to detention camps, even during the terrifying days after suicide bombers had struck the London Underground. People might resist — and if they did, it was likely to get bloody. And they’d still been denied firearms. The aliens had promised that they would have a force on standby to help out the police if necessary, but Robin was determined not to call on them. They’d kill civilians indiscriminately in the name of restoring order.
The vans pulled up outside the house and halted. Robin opened the doors and led the way out and up to the door, pressing down hard on the buzzer. A second team had been deployed to the back of the house, where it would snatch up anyone trying to climb out the rear window. There was a brief pause, and then a middle-aged Asian woman opened the door, her dark eyes clearly armed. The police weren’t very popular in this part of London, despite attempts to recruit more officers from ethnic minorities. And they were about to become a great deal less popular…
Robin grabbed her, frisked her with casual efficiency, and then spun her around and slapped on the cuffs. She let out a yelp of shock that became a scream when he shoved her into the arms of another policeman, who would put her out in the garden until they’d rounded up everyone in the house. Her yelp brought two teenage boys out to see what was going on; Robin barked at them to keep their hands where he could see them, just before taking advantage of their shock to handcuff the lead youth. The second tried to swing a punch at Robin, only to be sent falling to his knees when Robin slammed his baton into his chest. He vomited, but Robin had no time to see to his health. As soon as the cuffs were on, he crashed onwards, into the next room. Two younger girls were cooking something that smelt hot and spicy; he gave them a moment to turn off the gas before cuffing both of them and pushing them outside.
Five other policemen had clumped up the stairs, finding three middle-aged gentlemen and an elderly lady who looked old enough to be Robin’s great-grandmother. Her ID card claimed that she was sixty. The policemen cuffed her anyway, shouting at the men to keep them subdued as they were hauled downstairs. Robin kicked his way into the suicide bomber’s room, but saw little of interest apart from some pamphlets produced by radical fundamentalists calling on the Muslim community to rise up and slaughter the infidel. He picked a new-looking booklet up and glanced at it, realising that the fundamentalist arseholes had demoted America from Great Satan to Middle Satan. The aliens seemed to be the new Great Satan, although he wasn’t sure why. He’d heard that some fundamentalists were claiming that the aliens had bombed Mecca, but as far as he’d been able to tell they’d largely ignored the Middle East. The region was sinking into chaos after they’d smashed the military bases and left the rest of the region to sink or swim on its own.
Outside, a crowd was already gathering. The policemen ignored them as the next set of vans pulled up, ready to take the prisoners to the detention camp. Robin shuddered as the prisoners set off an awful racket, yelling and screaming for help from their fellow Muslims — and everyone else in the area. He felt sick at what he was doing — the Nazis had done the same to the Jews, as well as everyone else who’d incurred their hatred — but there was no choice. The looks some of the civilians were giving him suggested that they wouldn’t accept his excuses, or his self-justifications. They saw him as a monster serving an inhuman enemy.