The Yeoman: Crying Albion Series - Book 1 (2 page)

“Don’t you insult my
police force! The regular army is for anti-invasion measures, not your lot.”

“Our regular army
fought for overseas security when we had an empire, then for overseas interests.
At least now, following the Colonels War they are overseas keeping the oil
lanes clear with the navy. The Yeomanry are more equipped than a regular reservist
would be thanks to your gun laws.”

“My police force can
do your job, we have firearms too you know.”

“And we could do yours
a lot better than forcing people into rooms to be asked stupid questions!”

The officer ignored
Weyland
and spoke on.

“There’s another bill
going through parliament this winter, it’s called the Yeomanry Amendment Act.
The High Commissioner personally oversaw it.”

“Are we getting a pay
rise?”
Weyland
asked sarcastically.

“Very funny
Weyland
, your kind need to be put on a leash. It’s time for
checks and balances,” the enforcer smiled with dirty, coffee-stained teeth.

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really, we’re
getting new powers you see. All your firearms, munitions, armored cars and
aircraft will be licensed and regulated! Every county in Albion is getting a
new police chief to oversee and individually authorize each part. It won’t be
anything like the FEA licenses or section nine authority permits the Colonels
write out like fag-paper either. We’ll be vetting the entire Yeomanry independently
and unless it’s essential for target practice all your weapons are
gonna
be under lock and key. Under OUR lock and key.”

“That’ll never pass in
parliament!”
Weyland
responded sharply. “We get
exemption from your daft firearms legislation, we practically have our own
section of England anyway. Any policing is done by the Provost not your kind! That’s
our Albion Right. Along with freedom of movement, which you are infringing upon
right now.”

“Your ‘Albion Right?”
the policeman scoffed with a sudden laugh.

“I served my time in
the military, then the Yeomanry after that. I earned that right just like my
father before me.”

The Commissioner went
passive.

“It’ll pass
Weyland
, the Prime Speaker’s party has the majority now in
Parliament.” The passive mood changed again as the Enforcer spoke on. “Territory
or no, when it concerns this bill we’ll be coming and going as we please. What’s
more is you’ll be lucky if we let half of you own a rabbit rifle privately!” he
laughed.

“Well if that comes to
pass things will get very interesting plod,”
Weyland
said with a smile. ‘Plod’ was a slang term not liked by Enforcers.

“What do you mean? Are
you threatening me or my men?” Junior-Commissioner said.

“I just said, things
are
gonna
get interesting if you take on my Yeomanry.
The Colonels will take you down again if you push us.”

Brown brooded now and
stared at the fair-haired Yeoman with angry thoughts. His hazel eyes seemed to
cloud and veins showed on a furrowed brow.

“Well the debate has
been entertaining,”
Weyland
said suddenly, “but I
have to ask, am I free to leave now?”

This caused the Commissioner
to lose his temper. “No! You bloody-well stay here until I say so!”

It was
Weyland’s
turn to laugh.

“Well in that case, I consider
myself a prisoner then. Which means: 20650 Reservist-Corporal
Weyland
, blood group AB-Negative...” he went on to state
his date of birth and said nothing more.

“Don’t give me that
military crap Yeoman! What work have you been doing for the Colonels?! We know
you are up to something!”

Weyland
repeated his prisoner-of-war declaration in a monologue voice and stared into
space, ignoring the man.

“
Weyland
!
Answer me! If I have to I’ll get a judge to authorize—”

The man could not
complete the words, a burst of machine-gun fire interrupted him. The terrorist
attack on
Heysham
Ferry Terminal had begun.

On a
slight rise the terrorists overlooked the entire facility from their vantage
point. To their left was the ferry docks where the large Stena Traveler had
already half-unloaded. The large goods trucks were almost gone and soon the
many families would be marshalled off. In the center was the large concrete
plaza for transiting back and forth. Long lines of holiday-makers patiently
waited in their cars for the boat to be ready for them. The right-hand area was
the administration buildings and the Customs and Excise compound. They knew
from prior knowledge only three officers were on duty, with a forth on sick
leave. In their crazed and mixed-minds, their dream of a
Rabian
Caliphate danced over Europe. They were the tip of that spear and now yearned
to spill European Christian blood.

Abdul Ephraim and his
four suicide-warriors had lain watching the ferry terminal for hours waiting
for the moment of attack. Timing was critical. This was not just to be an
attack, it was to have a more elaborate touch.

Ephraim was armed with
an AKM assault rifle, several grenades and over two-hundred rounds of
ammunition. His compatriots were likewise armed except for one armed with a PKP
machine gun. Mohammed
Ragi
would have the special
duty for the right-hand section of the operation.

Ephraim’s handlers, a
man and a woman now departed. Fair-skinned, intelligent and of an odd demeanor
they had both supplied the weaponry and transported them the long way from
Northern France. Instead of the heavily policed Channel Tunnel with the risk of
random searches and checks, a private fishing boat had been used. It now was
far from sight, heading the long way back south to Wales and beyond to France.
The two agents were not going there, but headed to the vehicles another agent
had dropped off for them.

It was in one of these,
a Mercedes S200, that the handlers now made their way out of the area. As they
drove away the strange-looking man suppressed an excited judder that ran
through his body.

“It will be a good day
for us Rachel,” Cordell
Mastock
said. The faintly
ugly man spoke to his female companion with confidence. With ultra-dark eyes
that twinkled slightly with a scarlet hue he was unlike others. Some might
class him as a gloomy Breton, or a dark Celt from the remote mountains. The
truth was he was neither though and hailed far from the British Isles as did
his partner Rachel Shears. Their true names were of a similar distance from the
ones they now assumed.

“The Yeoman will make
a good scapegoat for when this makes the news,” Shears responded. Unlike him,
she was more easy on the eye, with reddish hair and lighter hazel eyes.

“He wasn’t supposed to
be detained by the police though, this will make framing him trickier. I hope Ephraim
is up to the job.”

“
Rabian’s
are scum, being assigned to them was a slur. We have much better work to do in
London than agent handling the turd-skins.”

“If it means the
Yeomanry are demonized by being associated with the
Rabians
,
so much the better. The faster they are disbanded and out of the way is the
better.”

“Our media contacts
will film the carnage?”

“Yes, but not for a
while, I don’t want to risk them getting caught up in it.”

“I wouldn’t want to be
that Yeoman, Ephraim has a taste for infidel blood.”

“So do you
Cordy
,” Rachel joked.

“I have more class
than him though, and I waste less fluids than
Rabians
usually,” Cordell laughed as they passed the sign for
Heysham
ferry-terminal. All being well they would be back at their safe-house within
two hours and enjoying the chaotic news scenes just before tea-time.

“What’s
going on? This is your doing
Weyland
!” the officer
whined. More shots were sounding sporadically and he flinched with the sounds.

“Not me or mine, this
is an attack! Get down!”
Weyland
kept low against a
wall, making sure he was away from any windows. The next burst from the
light-machine gun targeted around their building directly.

The two enforcers
searching
Weyland’s
vehicle had completed their
search and were both walking back towards the buildings back entrance. At the
first sound of gun shots both were cut down, one died instantly, the other was
mortally wounded. He crawled painfully to the faded-red doorway but couldn’t
reach the door-handle. The next long burst from
Ragi
ended his pain and ripped through the single-wall of brick in several areas.

The adjoining building
where ferry bookings were processed took the brunt of it. Two customers and a
member of staff were hit.

The Junior-Commissioner
ran to the corridor doorway and raced to the exit. He naively thought the main
doors were the target, he was wrong. As soon as he opened up the red doorway he
had time to see his two Enforcers laying in pools of blood before he too was
struck.

Weyland
wasted no time once the bothersome man had left. He knew from experience that Border
Custom’s buildings had a small armory. A quick scan of an office-room showed a
plain cabinet with serialized weaponry on a sheet of A4 paper. The list showed,
two MP5 submachine guns and a Browning Hi-Power and a HK G36 assault rifle.

The Yeoman tried the
handle but it was predictably locked. A nearby key-press was unlocked though
and he tried to calmly find the right key. A second burst of machine-gun fire
seemed to directly hammer into the main office area.

“They shot me! Your
men shot me!” came a voice behind him. Turning he saw the hapless Enforcer
officer clutching his arm. He was pale and in a state of shock.

“They aren’t my
fucking men!”
Weyland
shouted. “If they were I’d
already be gone, you’d be dead and there wouldn’t be all this extra racket!”

The Commissioner was
stunned. He was well used to an orderly life, routine and predictable outcomes.
The sudden changes had him almost mentally undone. He reached for his smart
phone and tried to dial 999.

“Whoever it is wants
to cause mayhem,”
Weyland
pauses on seeing the phone.
“Don’t bother, by the time they get here it will be a clean-up job, others will
be doing that.”

Weyland
considered more conversation, perhaps he could sway the zealous Commissioner to
his side. Then he dismissed it, like many things
Weyland
was good at, being a lone-warrior was his forte. He tried the second key and it
failed to turn the lock in the safe. As he reached for the third key his arm
brushed against his covert body-camera. It was button mounted into his dark
green jacket and had activated the moment Brown’s security team flagged him
down. It carried on recorded all that
Weyland
faced.
For the Yeoman he absently wondered if it would record his death? He was on an
island that either revered or loathed armed citizens, and
Heysham
was in non-Albion territory which had plenty of the latter. Then his instincts
of defiance kicked in and he felt the spirit of survival call out to him.

Two
Rabian
riflemen closed the distance towards the stationary
vehicles and the large ferry ship beyond it. The pair were ready with their grenades
and managed to reach throwing range before being spotted.

The marshalling woman
in a hi-vis jacket screamed a warning but chaos soon followed. The first
grenade landed short of a Ford Focus, blowing its windows out, and sending
waves of shrapnel everywhere. The next one rolled under a Toyota Corolla. It
was devastating, the occupants were too terrified to leave and blocked in from
in front and behind. Then came the explosion followed by more grenades at the
other vehicles. Those at the front and rear of the columns drove away at high
speed to the very edge of the docks. One car attempted sanctuary on the ferry.
As the young couple on board mounted the ramp they smashed head-on into a
departing van. For those trying the other direction another pair of
Rabian
gunmen ambushed them with a salvo of assault-rifle
gunfire. Over three hundred people were trapped between the sea and the
Rabian
positions. Slowly the death toll mounted.

The islands of
Brittania
had experienced terrorism before, but the
Rabian
ways were a newer, more grisly dish entirely.

Weyland
had the G36 out of the armory along with the
Browning Hi-Power. While the G36 used a different caliber to his L1A5 rifle the
pistol was in 9mm, matching his CZ 75. Tucking the sidearm behind him in the
small of his back he added a couple of spare magazines which went into his
jacket pocket.

The Junior Commissioner
had resumed calling 999 and was in the middle of a rambling, panic-stricken
monologue. When he heard the sound of metallic noises in one of the offices he
walked halfway across the main office and noticed the Yeoman.

“What are you doing? That’s restricted
weaponry! You can’t touch that!” Brown said with a high-pitched shriek.

A door being kicked in sounded and
distracted the attention of the policeman though. As he turned a swarthy-faced
Arab entered through the internal office doorway. He was an ugly man with a big
weapon. Seeing only the lone man with civilian clothes in front of him he
pointed angrily at the officer.

“Where’s the Yeoman!” he barked in accented
English.