The Excalibur Codex

II

The figure in the black ski mask walked calmly among the dead and the dying, picking out targets and executing them with short, efficient bursts from the Heckler & Koch 416 rifle, or firing methodically into the trapped cars, turning the interiors into individual slaughter-houses. This weapon was the ultra-compact C variant favoured by US special forces, fitted with a suppressor and a thirty-round magazine. The suppressor didn’t completely silence the weapon, but it was important for their purposes that there should be no general panic in the early stages of the operation. Of course, that wouldn’t last. But by then it would be too late.

The three squads had been designated Leopard, Lion and Tiger and the commander, Leopard 1, was quietly satisfied at the way the plan had come together. Satisfied, not proud. Naturally one regretted the necessity for shedding so much blood. They had debated long and hard whether to spare the women or the children, but the outcome had never really been in doubt. There was no such thing as innocence in their world. A lesson must be taught and a lesson learned if their people were to have the future they deserved. One culture threatened all others on the planet and only by being as hard as the followers of that culture would they provoke the reaction they needed. Their mission was to create a compact killing zone one mile long and three lanes wide that Leopard 1’s calculations estimated would contain upwards of one thousand vehicles and three thousand potential targets. Of course, some would escape, but the first instinct of most would be to stay with their cars. Each fighter carried eight spare thirty-round magazines in pouches fixed to his belt or a special harness. The extra weight affected their manoeuvrability, but it gave them an awesome killing power. Fifty feet away in the line of cars a passenger door opened and, as a young man stood up beside his car, Leopard 1 turned and fired, throwing him backwards in a welter of blood. Off in the distance the other two teams worked their way into the long lines of cars, vans and trucks. The trap was shut. Up ahead, a distinctive red sports car drew Leopard 1’s attention just as three boiler-suited workers emerged from a white van beyond it. The rifle came up and half a magazine bowled them over like skittles. Leopard 1 replaced the magazine with a fresh one and was about to turn the gun on the red car, but a shout drew attention to a stream of people fleeing from a tourist coach towards the central reservation.

‘Leopard 2. Targets at your ten o clock.’

The throat mike scrambled his commander’s calm voice, but Leopard 2 received the order loud and clear. He reached into a pouch of his close-fitting black overalls and pulled out an oval of olive green metal. With practised movements he flicked the safety clip and removed the pin holding a metal spoon in place. Counting down the seconds until it was time to throw, he lobbed the fragmentation grenade in an arc that landed in the midst of the fugitives. Four or five were engulfed in an explosion that ignited the fuel tanks of three nearby cars, incinerating still more casualties. With a last curious glance at the sports car Leopard 1 moved away to finish off the survivors.

Abeba hauled herself across the gap between the seats, cursing as her belt caught the stub of the gear lever. The engine was still running and she reached for the electronic switch that lowered the window. Her instinct had been to open the door and run, but she had seen what happened to the man in the next car. The wing mirrors on the MX-5 were quite large and in the passenger one she could see what was happening among the cars to the rear. Teams of masked men had emerged from only God knew where to fire mercilessly into the trapped cars, taking no account of the age, sex or colour of the occupants, and to throw what must be grenades into the cabs of the lorries and coaches. The mirror was also big enough to allow her to poke her head from the window so she could look beyond it to what was happening ahead, but still remain at least partly concealed. It felt as if she was screaming at them to shoot her, but, despite her fear, she forced herself to stay in position long enough to make some sense of what was going on. The gunmen wove among the cars, picking their targets, and it could only be moments before they reached her. It seemed to her that they operated with a terrible detached professionalism and she was only grateful they weren’t methodically working the lanes. Some targets, it seemed, were proving more attractive than others, and many people must have been attempting to flee the carnage. She had a chance if she could only retain the calm to pick her moment. She waited, counting the seconds, darting glances between the mirror and what was happening to her front, gauging the moments when no one was looking in her direction. One. Two. Oh, Christ. Three. She hauled herself through the open window and dropped to the ground, rattling her shoulder and tearing the knees of her jeans. Fortunately, the car opposite was a big off-road gas guzzler and she was slim enough to squirm beneath the chassis before she caught the attention of the men to left and right. Shaking with terror she lay on the wet Tarmac, with the stink of petrol in her nostrils and her fist in her mouth to stop the convulsive sobs that wracked her body. Her heart stopped as the windscreen of the MX-5 exploded and a pair of black jump boots topped by dark trousers appeared momentarily beside her head. She imagined the gunman staring into the car, wondering where its occupant had gone. All it would take was one look and she would be dead, but the killer had better things to do and the feet moved on. She wriggled sideways under the car towards the strip of hard shoulder that would take her to the grass verge, with its gorse bushes, and sanctuary. Her fingers touched something soft and she froze. Slowly she turned to check the obstruction … and bit back a scream. The body of a large man with half a head and a single staring eye blocked her escape. She fought for breath, trying to still the ever-rising terror. Perhaps it could help her. If she huddled up close to the dead body no one would see her. That was it. She would stay beneath the car and ride out the storm.

She closed her eyes and lay as close to the corpse as she dared. She could feel something wet soaking into her jeans and she knew it must be his blood. Oh, Jamie. Why wasn’t he here to comfort her? But she knew if Jamie Saintclair had been in the car he would have already died trying to protect her. The questions started to come. The who and the why? The stutter of the machine guns was non-stop, punctuated by loud explosions. Al-Qaida was the only group capable of such murderous ruthlessness. This was an attack that made the 7/7 bombings of 2005 look like a pinprick. But surely the security services would have been watching them? How did they get the weapons into the country, and where did this frightening level of military organization come from? She realized she was analysing the attack to keep her mind off the dangers all around her; the unrelenting screams of people dying; the shrill plea from the woman she had left in the next car and the awful cries as the children were executed. Yet taking her mind off the danger was dangerous in itself. A particularly loud explosion somewhere close was followed by a blast of heat. Something flickered at the edge of her vision and a line of yellow-blue flame ran unerringly across the Tarmac towards her hiding place. Burning fuel. Even as she watched, it licked at the off-roader’s rear tyre. If she didn’t move soon she’d be incinerated.

She managed to wriggle round so that her head was level with the dead man’s and pushed forward until she could see past him to left and right. Nothing. She had a chance. Four yards to the grass and another two up the bank and into the bushes. She tensed, checking again for the terrorists, but could see no sign of imminent danger. With a twist of her hips she wriggled clear and crouched beside the car, making one final check before throwing herself across the road and into the safety of the bushes. Heedless of the thorns that tore at her clothing, she squirmed deep into the prickly gorse and went to ground, attempting to make her body one with the damp earth. There was no question of going further because behind the bushes lay a fence, then open ground. She wouldn’t get another five paces before she was gunned down.

From her elevated position she could see the entire motorway for almost a mile through a gap in the bushes. Incredibly, on the far side, the occasional car still drove past, the occupants ghoulishly ogling the carnage until they realized how dangerous it was. In the far distance one group of black-clad terrorists worked their way through the traffic towards the overturned lorry, as a similar unit, presumably including the gunman she’d seen, moved towards them. In the centre, another team fired methodically into the trapped cars and threw grenades among the dead and the dying. There must be hundreds of casualties already, maybe even thousands. This wasn’t 7/7, it was the British equivalent of 9/11—a mass slaughter that would never be forgotten — or forgiven. At the very heart of the cornered traffic the terrified driver of a large fuel tanker attempted to smash his way clear of the trap, crashing into the cars in front and behind as he tried to create room for manoeuvre. But, even as she watched, one of the terrorists lifted some sort of tube to his shoulder and a missile streaked out to hit the big lorry square in the centre. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, then the tanker opened like a giant rose petal and with an enormous ‘whoof’ a fireball shot hundreds of feet into the air and a wave of burning fuel engulfed the lorry and everything around it. Car after car exploded to add their fiery death throes to the conflagration. Stunned by the blast and frozen with horror, Abeba prayed their occupants had all been killed outright, but she knew it was an impossible hope. In the centre of that orange and red inferno, individuals and families were burning alive; she would never hear their screams, but the memory of them would never leave her.

The rocket attack on the tanker must have been the signal to withdraw, because the terrorists began to funnel back through the cars to a central point on the motorway verge a hundred yards to her right. She was surprised how few they were, probably only a dozen; tall and lean in their dark clothing, faces covered by identical masks and carrying their weapons with the casual ease of people who handled them every day. Abeba bunched up in an attempt to make herself smaller as two of the killers walked by within feet of her — no, not walked; the way they moved, confident, arrogant, but always wary, made her think of films she had seen of hunting leopards. She felt a surge of relief as they disappeared from sight and fought the urge to vomit, making a tiny choking sound as they moved off.

A minute later she heard the sound of engines starting up. Her first instinct was to stay hidden, but curiosity and an odd feeling of guilt commanded her movements. She had survived. All those people in the burning cars had not. Their killers were about to escape to God knows where and she owed it to them to at least see which direction their murderers took.

She turned and wriggled through the bushes to the top of the bank. By the time she reached the summit, two or three powerful cross-country motorcycles were already gunning their way across the field and they were quickly followed by four more. The first bikes reached a fence, and she expected them to stop, but they rode on as if it didn’t exist. Of course, they would have cut it to clear their escape route. Sirens in the distance. At last. How had it taken them so long? She glanced at her watch and was astonished to see that less than ten minutes had passed since the lorry overturned. Images flashed through her head; blood and flame and terrified young faces. And something else. To her surprise she was still clutching her mobile phone as if it was some kind of talisman, the message to Jamie still on screen. He’d hear about the attack on television. She needed to tell him she was safe. Her fingers fumbled for the correct buttons and she had time to form the words ‘I’m OK’ before she heard the rustling behind her. Somehow she managed to type in seven more characters and hit send before the shadow loomed over her. The sirens were increasing in volume and they’d been joined by the soft, rhythmic thud of a faraway helicopter, but she knew it was too late for her.

She looked up in mute appeal and the figure in the mask said something she didn’t quite catch. The gun barrel rose. Abeba Trelawney’s last conscious thought was that her killer had blue eyes.

‘I’m sorry,’ Leopard 1 repeated. ‘You should have stayed quiet.’

The masked figure turned to join the others, but at the last moment noticed the mobile phone in the dead woman’s hand and stooped to pick it up, staring at the screen. The ‘whup, whup, whup’ of the approaching helicopter precluded any further deliberations and the terrorist leader ran to where the three remaining Leopards waited on their trail bikes, pulled on a helmet and mounted the fourth machine.

‘Let’s go,’ Leopard 1 shouted. ‘Pull them into the middle of the field.’

‘Jesus Christ, what the hell is happening down there?’ The forward observer’s words echoed what the pilot of the police surveillance helicopter was thinking, but he was too professional to broadcast his own feelings over the air. Besides, he knew exactly what he was witnessing as he flew through the pall of smoke that towered over the motorway. Unusually for a police pilot, he had flown choppers in combat, in Iraq, and the scene below reminded him of the road to Basra after American jets and attack helicopters had shot up a ten-mile convoy of fleeing Iraqis. He could see the burning cars and the great glowing pink flower that had once been some kind of petrol tanker. Among the jammed lines of traffic lay dozens of still figures, some of them so small they must be children. He hoped they were hiding, but knew they were not. The pilot was a parent himself and as the scale of the massacre became clear his initial shock turned to anger. He vowed that, if he had anything to do with it, the evil bastards who’d done this would spend the rest of their lives in jail.

‘There! At six o’clock.’

The pilot felt his heart quicken as he spotted the little knot of motorcycles speeding away across the fields. In the distance he could see several others making their way towards a large wood. For once anger overcame discipline. ‘I wish this was a fucking Apache,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘They wouldn’t be so cocky with a couple of hundred rounds of three-hundred-mill and a Hydra up their arses.’

‘Just stay on them.’ The observer, operating the helicopter’s video camera, liked his pilot well enough, but sometimes resented the fact that he thought the only heroes were in the military. In the rear, the aircraft’s tactical commander relayed instructions to the ground units homing in on the attack. He grunted. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get the bastards.’

The pilot put the chopper into hover at three thousand feet, just to make certain the stabilized Wescam could get the best possible picture of the terrorists and the bikes they were riding.

‘That’s great, boss,’ the observer announced. The camera’s high-tech lens was picking up every little detail. ‘Ah …? ’

‘What?’

But the white spark the observer had spotted among the trees had turned into a streak and it was already halfway to the Eurocopter EC153. The pilot reacted with the speed of a veteran, but by the time his fingers twisted the cyclical control stick and his foot kicked the left anti-torque pedal to put the aircraft into a dive it was too late.

‘Oh, fuck.’

The Stinger missile hadn’t even reached its top speed of Mach 2 when it struck the helicopter a foot below the rotor blades. The tactical commander, seated just beneath the point of impact, died instantly as the three-kilogram warhead exploded, incinerated and dismembered in the same millisecond. A ragged-edged fragment of alloy engine block decapitated the pilot so that his still-helmeted head fell between his feet and his neck fountained blood to paint the windscreen scarlet. With no power and no one at the controls, the Eurocopter went into an uncontrollable spin. Trapped at the centre of the inferno, all the observer could do was scream and watch the earth rise to meet him in a whirling blur of speed, fire and light.

The terrorist leader watched the chopper flutter downwards like a butterfly with burning wings to crash with an enormous rending of metal. The main fuel tanks exploded on impact with a massive ‘whump’, finally ending the agony of what was left of the observer. Leopard 1 brought the big bike round and rode up to the wreck. The bike slid to a halt and its rider savoured the pungent scent of burning petrol, intrigued by the blackened, twisting form sitting upright in a pool of fire beside the wreckage.

‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ the helmeted figure whispered. ‘Allahu Akbar.’