The Fall of Night

Chapter Fourteen: Picking Up The Pieces, Take One

London, England

“There’s nothing at all on the bands,” Sergeant Harold Page said. “Even the BBC seems to have gone off the air.”

“I see,” Briggs said. “Stay here.”

He hopped out of the mobile command post and glanced around. The scene was chaotic; policemen, bodyguards, a handful of survivors from the outskirts of Whitehall and soldiers were milling around, some of them carrying weapons and looking nervous. No one seemed to be in command and, judging from the jamming on the airwaves, no one would have the slightest idea just what had happened. If he hadn’t seen the missile, Briggs would have thought that there had been a bomb, or even a gas leak.

He unhooked the whistle from his belt and blew it, loudly. Heads turned to him as he clambered up on a piece of debris; it looked as if it had come from Downing Street. The thought depressed him, even as he saw the eyes of everyone turning to him, looking for instructions or advice. People needed advice in an emergency zone, even soldiers; they needed someone to present a clear threat before training took over.

“I am Inspector Dave Briggs,” he said, loudly enough to be heard over the roar of the fires. A distant crackle of gunfire made them all jump; the passage of a jet fighter high overhead drew their eyes skyward. The soldiers clutched their weapons more tightly; the policemen and civilians gave them uneasy looks. Briggs remembered the loudspeaker on the mobile command post and checked his radio. At such range, he could use it even through the jamming. “In the absence of any contact with higher command” — ignoring the fact that they were standing on the ruins of the highest command in Britain — “I am assuming command of the disaster scene.”

The relief in their eyes was not reassuring. “We have to tend to survivors, put out those fires, and work out just what in hell happened here,” he said. It was a missile attack, but that meant that someone had had to fire the missile… and he didn’t think that terrorists could do that. They were at war. “Policemen, I want you to seal the area completely; move all civilians to Hyde Park or somewhere else out of the way; where is the nearest emergency store of fire-fighting equipment.”

One of the guards raised his hand, almost as if they were at school. “There’s a set of hoses down near the river,” he said. “It may have survived the blast.”

Briggs was improvising and knew it. “Good,” he said. He nodded to three Privates who were standing there, looking as if they were desperate for something to do. “You three; go with him and find out what the status of the equipment is.” He glanced over at the civilians. “Is there anyone here with medical training?”

Several more hands were raised. “Good,” Briggs said. The trick was to look as if he knew what he was doing. “I want you to tend to any injured that we bring out of the building. There’s some medical supplies in the mobile command centre and there should be some ambulances and several fire engines along in a moment.”

He took a breath as the policemen headed off to carry out his orders. “Who’s the senior military officer here?”

There was a muttered consultation and a wounded Sergeant stepped forward and saluted. “I was at the barracks, sir,” he said. “We were just going out of the building when we heard the missile and there was an explosion and we came here because the barracks were wrecked. We’ve been trying to raise higher authorities and no one is answering.”

Briggs cursed under his breath. “How many men are there here?”

“Forty, it seems,” the Sergeant said. Briggs saw the trickle of blood running down his face and silently cursed; there was no time to spare the Sergeant’s presence. “The Captain was trying to organise something at the barracks when the missile hit.”

“I see,” Briggs said. “What’s your name?”

“Sergeant Christopher Roach, sir,” Roach said. He started to recite his rank and serial number; Briggs held up a hand to stop him. “As far as I know, I’m the senior survivor from the barracks.”

“I want you to send one of your men to the nearest hospital and tell them that we need some medical support out here,” Briggs said. He was about to order fire engines as well, when the first of the big red vehicles pulled up, running terribly late. Four more had also arrived; he couldn’t help, but notice the bullet holes in one of the vehicles windows. “No; send two, both armed. Deploy the others to cover relief efforts if needed.”

Roach didn’t argue. “I understand,” he said, as he took in the sight. Firemen were spilling out of the fire engine; many of them running towards the Thames with fire hoses, others checking the pressure in the water hydrants nearby. Judging from the general devastation and the collapsed streets, Briggs suspected that the water mains would have been burst by the missile attack. “I’ll see to it at once.”

He leaned forwards. “You do know that we’re at war?”

“I saw the missile,” Briggs said, equally softly. There was no time for a panic. “We have to find the Prime Minister.”

Roach looked at the ruins. “No chance, sir,” he said. “None at all.”

The lead fireman came up to Briggs. His nametag read SAM STEIN. “Sir, I assume that you’re in command,” he said, his voice brisk and under control. “I have to report terrorists near the fire station; one of the bastards took a shot at my people and wounded one. What do you want us to do?”

Briggs gave him an incredulous look. “Put out the fires,” he said, shortly. “Have you any contact at all with higher authority?”

“None, sir,” Stein said. Briggs felt his blood run cold. “We didn’t even get the alert signal; we heard the explosions and then we had to go to the nearest pillar of smoke.”

Briggs stepped back as the fire crew went to work. They knew their stuff, he saw; several of them had attached hoses to the fire engines, running towards the river and draining water from the Thames to attack the fires. The fires roared through what remained of the MOD Main Building — he had a nasty thought about ammunition cooking off in there — and refused to be cowed; it fought back furiously. Ambulances arrived under armed escort; doctors and nurses spilled out of them and started to work on the injured. Briggs smiled; he had forgotten the heavy police escort given to the murderer in the nearest hospital, even if he had wanted the man to simply die when he had heard about the cost.

The silence worried him. He should have been able to make contact with New Scotland Yard or one of the back-ups, but the nearest police station had been as isolated as the mobile command centre. There were still occasional bursts of gunfire echoing out over the city and a whispered report of rioting in Regent’s Park, the heart of Londonistan. Were they in the middle of an Islamic insurgency? It hardly seemed creditable; sure, there were a few firebrands who openly preached violence, but the vast majority of Muslims wouldn’t join a war against the British state, would they? If nothing else, it would put a permanent end to their benefits checks from the welfare state.

The silence…

A gunshot rang out, far too close for comfort; moments later, there was a second shot, and then silence. “That was young Omar,” Roach said, checking his radio. The military radios worked at short range, jamming or no jamming. “He just shot back at a sniper and killed him; Omar is a great sharpshooter, best in the unit.” He paused. “Not that I would ever tell him that, of course.”

“Of course,” Briggs agreed. He could see more fires now, spreading up over London, one very nasty fire rising up from the Docklands. “Do you have any knowledge at all of where we might find more authority?”

Roach shook his head. “You’re it,” he said. There were far too many civilians around, many of them tourists and all on the verge of panic. The London Eye seemed to have jammed; Briggs could see people in the bubbles and knew that they, too, would be panicking. “I only had the barracks and the police stations…”

“I’ve got something,” Page shouted. Briggs was there almost before he realised that his feet were moving. “It’s faint, but it’s there, on one of the military mobile telephone bands.”

The voice was faint. “This is command,” it said. “Please identify yourself.”

“This is Inspector David Briggs,” Briggs said. The voice sounded oddly familiar. “I’m at Downing Street and we need help.”

“This is Major-General Langford,” the voice said. It became much clearer within moments as both units strove to boost the signal and beat the jamming. Briggs remembered a tall thin man from the PJHQ; he had been wondering what had happened to Northwood, even to the point of considering sending one of the soldiers there to find out. “Please report on your situation.”

“Bloody desperate,” Briggs said. The fact that they had made any sort of contact was a massive boost to his morale. Judging from Roach’s face, the same thought had occurred to him; he was smiling openly. “It seems as if we’re in the middle of a fucking war.”

“We are,” Langford said flatly. “I need to know; what’s happening there?”

“We have the fires more or less halted now,” Briggs said. It had only taken a couple of hours to bring them under some form of control. “The entire areas a wreck; we only pulled out a few dozen survivors and they were all on the edge of the impact area. None of them are important people, sir; the Houses of Parliament have been utterly destroyed.”

There was a long pause. “There’s no hope?” Langford asked finally. “None at all?”

“No,” Briggs said. He closed his eyes. “Sir, just who is in charge of the country?”

“Me, it seems,” Langford said. Briggs heard the bitterness in his voice and shuddered. “For the moment, you have been confirmed commander of all of the police and other emergency services in London; New Scotland Yard appears to be gone, along with the PJHQ. We’ll sort out seniority later. Is there a military officer there?”

“Yes,” Briggs said. He passed the microphone to Roach. “You’d better tell him about the sniper as well.”

Briggs reported in clear and concise terms, sparing nothing, from the details of the missile impact at the barracks to the snipers and gunfire that burst out from time to time over the city. Briggs had studied the snipers that had cropped up in America; a single man with a high-powered rifle and no sense of morals could bring an entire city to a halt for hours. How many were loose within London?

“I see,” Langford said finally. “can you get a bearing on the source of the jamming?”

Briggs looked at Page. “Yes, sir,” he said. He tapped commands into the system and recited a bearing. “That’s the rough bearing.”

There was a pause. “The Russian Embassy,” Langford said, after a long moment. Briggs realised that Langford must have taken a bearing from somewhere else and used it to triangulate the source of the jamming. “It figures.”

Briggs rubbed his bald head. “Sir, do you think that the Russians are behind all of this?”

“I think that they’re the ones doing the jamming,” Langford said. “That may not be damning, but any court of law would consider it highly suspicious behaviour at the best of times. Sergeant Roach?”

Roach straightened, as if they were face to face. “Yes, sir?”

Langford sounded too tired to be stern. “Sergeant, how many men do you have now who are armed?”

“Fifty-seven,” Roach said. They had been trickling in from the remains of the other barracks; most of them had been helpful, both in providing security and in caring for the injured. Some of them had been veterans of actual fighting; they had understood some things that civilians would never grasp. “I don’t have a complete unit, just dribs and drabs.”

“It’ll have to do,” Langford said. “Take thirty men and take the Russian Embassy; shut the jamming down, any means necessary. Tell them that we will try to treat them with the standard respect for diplomatic representatives, sneak attack notwithstanding, but if they don’t shut down the transmitter and surrender, we’ll bomb the embassy.”

“Understood, sir,” Roach said. “I won’t let you down.”

He marched out of the mobile command centre, shouting orders to his men. “General, we need support out here,” Briggs said. “Just what the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Langford admitted. “Most of the command network has been shattered; what reports we are receiving are frequently confusing and contradictory. Once the jamming has been removed, we can hopefully start finding out just what is going on, and then somehow take whatever action we need to take.”

“I understand,” Briggs said. Several more police officers had arrived, none of them outranking him. London had to be in chaos; the streets were crowded at the best of times, and now it looked as if half the city was on fire. People would be fleeing the city for the countryside, if they had anywhere to go, and looters would be coming out of their holes, intent on enriching themselves. “I just wish I had more men.”

The Russian Embassy, like every other Embassy that felt itself to be under threat from terrorists, was much stronger than it appeared from the outside. Ambassador Konstantin Molotov — he had assumed the surname in honour of his private hero — knew that it could be held for at least an hour against a determined force, such as a Chechen resistance group. The thought of what happened to Russians who fell into their hands would keep the guards — all of whom were far more dangerous than their resumes suggested — fighting well past all hope being gone. Molotov also knew that the Embassy, like all embassies, was dependent upon the goodwill of the local population — or at least its government.

Molotov, like all diplomats, had been furious over the fate of the American embassies in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. He had been one of the people calling upon the President to support the American War in revenge for the decision of the Jihadists to move against the embassies, which were intended to be sanctuaries. The discovery that the embassy was at the centre of Russian war plans hadn’t pleased him, not least because, as Ambassador, he could be made to pay the price for the actions of the FSB agents operating behind enemy lines. The sealed orders had been clear; keep the jamming going as long as possible, then request safe passage out of Europe…

And so Molotov had heaved his bulk down to the gates. “This is Russian territory,” he said, as calmly as he could. The young man facing him didn’t look too steady; he was holding a weapon as if it was a deadly snake. “You have no right to force admittance.”

“You have launched a war against us,” the British soldier said. Molotov saw the blood trickling down his face and shuddered; it was a far cry from any world he was personally familiar with, nothing to do with the soft words and softer moves of diplomacy. “You are engaged in hostile acts!”

“I deny all such accusations,” Molotov said. He realised instantly that it was the wrong thing to say; the young man brought his weapon up and pointed it right at his chest. “Threatening an Ambassador…”

“You’ve killed the fucking Prime Minister,” the British soldier said. “Ambassador, you will open the embassy and order your men to surrender.”

The Russian soldiers lifted their own weapons. Molotov waved at them frantically to lower them. “And what happens if I refuse?” He asked. “Russia has a right to guard her territory…”

“If you refuse, my men will keep you trapped in here while a fighter-bomber drops a bomb on your head,” the British soldier said. “The jamming will be shut down and you will all be killed.” He ran a hand across his brow. “Choose, Ambassador; I have no more time!”

Molotov took a breath. “In that case, I will open the embassy,” he said. The prospects of bullets flying anywhere near him terrified him. “I must inform you that my government will protest in the fullest possible terms to your Prime Minister, or his replacement, the United Nations, the European Union and consider taking the strongest action against your personally.”

He paused for breath. “Under international agreements, I must remind you that you have no right to harm any of my people and in fact must see to their reparation as quickly as possible through the graces of a neutral country,” he continued, hoping that the Englishman would let him finish. “As diplomats, we have rights…”

“Put your weapons down and assume the position,” the British soldier said to the guards, cutting Molotov off in mid-lecture. Resentfully, the guards obeyed; other British soldiers appeared and scooped up the weapons, guarding the Russians carefully as they were all herded into the grounds. The embassy quickly emptied of staff; cooks, cleanings, a handful of girls who were officially typists, but were really there to be mistresses, all joined the soldiers on the ground.

“Now, Mr Ambassador,” the British soldier said. “Lead me to the jamming system.”

Molotov obeyed.