Invasion (40 page)

It was a gamble, one that could cost them their lives, but it might just work. There were two vehicles, mobile SAM launchers of the Royal Artillery, and both had their systems shut down. They gave off no signature at all, neither electronic emissions nor returns from their armoured hulls. Even their engines were switched off. Everything
that could be shut down, was.

The vehicles were parked behind two huge metal grain silos on a farm a few miles north of Andover, the giant containers masking their presence both visually and electronically from anyone watching from the east. They had received the order to evacuate over twenty minutes ago, but the section commander had consulted his crews and decided to wait just a little longer. He felt sure an opportunity would present itself for both vehicles to expend their remaining anti-aircraft missiles. To abandon them just seemed like a terrible waste and they were determined not to leave without
a fight. A few minutes earlier, Arabian armour had passed them to the south. They were now officially behind enemy lines, but they would worry about that later. All that mattered now was launching the missiles.

The rumble in the distance grew louder. The lookout on top of one of the silos lowered his binoculars and reached for his radio. Enemy aircraft, coming in from the east, fast movers.

The commander ordered the weapons systems to be powered up. They’d only get one shot at this before they were detected. The distant rumble quickly increased to a roar and then the aircraft were there, passing low to the north in tight formation. There
was no time for finesse. Each missile was programmed to auto-seek, switching randomly between heat-seeking and infrared, allowing the weapons to choose their own targets. The order was given and the missile tubes swivelled around to face the northwest. Both vehicles rocked on their tracks as the missiles were loaded and launched at two-second intervals. When the last missile had roared from its tube, both crews grabbed their gear and weapons and ran for the relative safety of a nearby wood.

The British commander had done well. Blinded by the low sun and confident in the collapse of the Infidel forces, the Arabian pilots were focused solely on releasing their own ordinance as
they scanned the horizon for targets. When their threat receivers
screamed in their ears they were momentarily confused, then reacted instinctively
as their instruments registered the incoming missiles.

Two fighter-bombers
banked left and right simultaneously, veering into each other and obliterating both planes from the sky. In seconds, the missiles had eaten up the distance between the other planes and detonated one after the other, the explosions rippling across the summer sky, filling the air with thousands of deadly metal shards. Another three aircraft exploded, the burning debris spiralling to the fields below.

Now there were just three left. One was badly damaged and limped for home, black smoke trailing from one of its engines. Of the remaining two, one banked hard around and headed for the probable launch site. In the distance, the pilot saw a cloud of white smoke hanging low on the ground and his instrumentation told him that there were two military-spec vehicles parked there. He flipped his weapons control and selected cluster munitions. Less than one minute after the British crews had vacated their vehicles, the whole area erupted in a succession of detonations as the farm buildings, grain silos and everything else in a two hundred metre radius was engulfed in a series of fireballs. Leaking fuel from a punctured wing, that fighter too headed back to its temporary
base at Heathrow.

The lead plane continued onwards unscathed, its pilot furious at the loss of his flight and desperate to exact revenge. On-board systems reported several possible targets and the fighter-bomber engaged them with extreme prejudice, wiping out six British tanks in a series of low-level sorties.

The pilot checked his instruments. They were still good for fuel and the sun had finally dipped below the horizon. Now he could see. His weapons/ navigation officer seated behind him gave him the last known position of the enemy convoy that had been detected by the LARVE. General Mousa himself had expressed interest in its whereabouts and composition. It would make a nice, fat target, thought the pilot.

He tilted his head and looked below him. He was flying parallel to a main road, which was being utilised by a large Arabian armoured column heading westward. The pilot saw a few arms waving and he dipped his wings in reply. It always made the tankies happier when they had overhead cover. He checked the terrain ahead. There was an industrial estate on a rise a couple of kilometres in front of them and some residential housing behind that. His instrumentation told him there were no immediate threats. The armoured column was safe enough.

The pilot banked the aircraft to the south. The coast wasn’t that far away, roughly fifty kilometres. He decided to take a closer look down there.

Jim Newman was starting to get worried, and not because an Arabian fighter-bomber had just screamed overhead; it was the growing mob on the other side
of the fence that was making him nervous. The plane had excited them. They’d begun to shake the chain-link violently, the ripple effect causing the metal ties near the ground to come loose from their fastenings. The adults leaned against the fence, pushing the bottom outwards and some of the smaller kids crawled under. They, in turn, held up their side and now the rest of the mob spilled out onto the industrial estate. Some of the kids wandered
off to explore the deserted site, but the older ones held their ground, their eyes fixed on Newman and his Land Rover. There was going to be trouble. Fixed to his chest rig, the radio crackled.

‘Jimbo, come in.’

Newman keyed the mike. ‘Send.’

‘We’re open for business. Stand by, chum.’

That meant the Arabian forces had been sighted and were heading towards them. Newman’s heart pounded in his chest. Any moment now the firing would start – and their escape
route
was blocked.

Newman turned the jeep’s engine over and it roared into life. The mob numbered well over a hundred
now, strung out across the road
. Slowly they began to advance towards him. Newman grabbed his weapon and slid out of the vehicle, leaving the engine running.

‘Stay where you are!’ he bawled in his most authoritative voice. ‘This is a national emergency situation! Go back to your homes!’

Some of the younger kids stopped short at the sight of the gun. The older ones didn’t. They kept moving slowly towards Newman. Emboldened by their peers, the younger ones now began to fan out around the jeep. In another minute or so Newman would be surrounded. He didn’t want to shoot any civilians, particularly kids, but he might not have a choice here. He’d seen what mobs could do to people caught at the sharp end of their rage. There was no way Jim Newman was going out like that.

He brought his weapon up into his shoulder and looked down the optical sight, taking aim dead centre on the upper torso of a shirtless, muscular man covered in tattoos. He looked to be in his early forties, shaven-headed, wearing heavy gold jewellery around his thick neck. Maybe he was a leader. If Newman dropped him, the crowd might falter. Then again, they may go fucking ballistic. He closed one eye to steady his aim and prayed for the nearby tank to commence firing.

‘Target, tank! Twelve hundred yards!’

‘Load HEAT round.’

The breech clanged shut.

‘Loaded! Ready!’

There was a moment’s
silence, a segment of time that seemed to stretch beyond all earthly constraints. The air inside the tank was thick with tension.

‘God be with us, gentlemen,’ said the tank commander quietly. He adjusted the focus of his main battle sight and brought the lead enemy vehicle advancing up the road towards them into sharp relief.

‘Fire!’

The deep concussion rang around the industrial estate, startling the crowd. Some of the younger kids screamed and the adults instinctively ducked, crouching on the ground. The tattooed man picked himself up and turned to face Newman.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he roared.

Another blast echoed around the estate,
quickly f
ollowed by two more.

‘Get back to your homes!’ ordered Newman, his voice shaking with adrenaline, his weapon
still levelled at the man’s chest.

‘What the fuck’s happening? Who’s shooting?’ the tattooed man demanded, his head swivelling towards the sound of the cannon roaring somewhere close by. Worryingly, Newman didn’t think the man was scared. His eyes bulged and burned with a manic intensity. He turned back to Newman, the mob bunching behind him.
‘I need a gun, gotta defend
myself! Gimme that fucking shooter!’ he roared, walking quickly towards the Land Rover.

Newman shot the man twice in the chest, the body flopping
lifelessly to the ground. The crowd turned and scattered, heading for the safety of the housing estate. Newman kept a careful eye on them but they were dispersing fast, rolling under the chain-link fence. He fired another burst into the air, just to encourage the stragglers. The fear wouldn’t
last long. He was one man, after all, and the mob had grown large. A member of their community had been killed and that meant that, sooner or later, all hell would break loose.

A nearby warehouse suddenly exploded, sending Newman scrambling for cover behind the jeep. Huge sheets of twisted and blackened aluminium fluttered crazily in the air before crashing to the ground nearby. The Arabians had found their range. Newman piled inside the Land Rover and revved the engine.

‘C’mon, c’mon,’ he muttered, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. Then he saw the crew, racing around the corner of an adjacent warehouse. He slammed the jeep into gear and roared towards them, stamping on the brakes a moment later. The crew piled in, doors slamming. The commander saw the body on the road and the mob that pelted the jeep with stones and bottles from behind the chain-link fence.

‘Jesus,’ he cringed
as the missiles clattered off the roof.

‘I don’t know what’s worse,’ Newman said, roaring towards the entrance to the estate. ‘That lot or the camel jockeys.’ Seconds later they reached the main road. Newman slowed the jeep and checked both ways. To the left the road was
clear. Looking right, thick columns of black smoke roiled into the air from the valley below.

‘Looks like you got lucky, then,’ Newman said.

‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ smiled the commander. ‘We got three of the bastards.’

It had been a small victory, but a victory none the less, and they’d all survived the encounter unscathed. In the gathering darkness, the jeep surged across the junction and headed
northwest
towards the Welsh border.

The pilot skimmed low over the English countryside, searching the ground, scanning his instruments. Fuel state was pretty fair, enough for another twenty minutes before he had to return to Heathrow. Behind him, his Weps/Nav officer also scanned his instruments, finding nothing worthy of their attentions. What they needed was something big, something substantial to assuage the anger and frustration that both men felt on losing the flight to a single engagement.

The pilot felt the same mix of emotions, but now, as the adrenaline of the earlier action faded, he felt something
else: fear. As flight leader he knew they’d been flying too close together. Despite the warnings, he’d
been lulled into a false sense of security by a combination of superior technology, overwhelming numbers and an enemy in disarray. But that enemy still had teeth and the will to use them. They’d turned like rats in a corner and destroyed most of his flight.

Excuses would be wasted on the Group Commander. This mission was a
‘special’, an attack that had been hastily prepared using recommended
personnel, himself included. And he’d made a rookie mistake. He hoped that other elements of the plan were running well. If the failure of this operation
were
deemed to have been caused by his error, then his career would be short-lived indeed. The Weps/Nav’s voice hissed inside his helmet.

‘Got something.’

‘What
is it?’

‘Air-search radar, forty-nine kilometres south-south west. Recommend new heading of one eight-zero degrees. We could lose some altitude, too.’

‘Roger.’

The pilot banked to the left and took the plane due south out to sea, thundering over the coastal town of Seaton and out into Lyme Bay. Behind the pilot, Weps/Nav began firming up his data on the enemy signal.

‘I am now detecting three air-search sets, all low frequency. Designate signals as mobile anti-aircraft batteries, probably in passive mode. Locations are static.’

The pilot maintained his heading. He’d
reduced his airspeed in order to lower his fuel consumption, but they couldn’t maintain their time on station for much longer. He keyed his microphone.

‘Fuel state is low. Do we have a target?’

‘Not sure,’ came the reply. ‘Three mobile SAM units, all in fairly
close proximity. ‘The Weps/Nav studied the map display in front of him, toggling the view to a more detailed one. The SAM units were a few kilometres apart, their radars looking to the east. He studied the contours of the map. That made sense. They were all on elevated ground that dropped away to-