The Fall of Night

Chapter Thirty-Six: The Way Home

Brussels/Ostend, Belgium

“Wake up, sweethearts,” a voice called from outside the door. “It’s time for breakfast!”

Colonel Seth Fanaroff rubbed his back as he pulled himself off the floor and to his feet. The brothel they had found had accepted their story that they were lovers — in defiance of various US Army regulations on fraternisation — and had been quite happy to take American dollars once they had established a link-up with an American bank. The catch was that they had to share a room, and, as a gentleman, he had insisted on sleeping on the floor. Being a gentleman was starting to look like a really bad idea.

“Time to get up,” he called, gently poking Captain Saundra Keshena in the shoulder before averting his gaze as she sat up, hands reaching for the pistol she had concealed under the pillow. She had been having nightmares about the desperate flight through the city to the brothel in the Red Light district; Fanaroff, who had been through several wars and dangerous situations, had taken it more in stride. “We have a long day ahead of us.”

It was a lie, he thought; they had managed to get back in touch with the States, only to be told to sit tight and wait. They were the only two Americans, it seemed, to have survived the fall of the embassy; the United States would be looking for a way to extract them, but Fanaroff wasn't hopeful. The best plan he had so far was to wait for the Russians to arrive, make themselves known to the Russian commander, and ask for reparation. The Russians might have returned the crew of the ABM stations, but he didn’t know if they would be willing to repatriate two lone Americans in a city that had descended into chaos. Brussels was a confusing mass of factions; he didn’t understand even how the water supplies had come back on, let alone how the city intended to survive the next few weeks. Large parts of the city had burnt in that first terrible day.

He splashed a little water on his face; the madam — Madam Rose — had insisted that they conserve water as much as possible, even to the point of filling bathtubs with the liquid and forbidding more than basic washes; who knew what would happen to the water supplies in the future? One of the other groups, an Islamic group that had managed to establish itself, had attacked the Red Light district in a fit of holy zeal… and the criminals had kicked them out with extreme violence. The Red Light district held some of the nastiest characters in Brussels… and they had been, in their own way, patriotic. Every man was against his neighbour, but it was every inhabitant against an outsider; the police had never come into the Red Light district on official business. It wouldn’t have been healthy.

Saundra was rubbing the side of her head. “Is there any news from home?”

“No,” Fanaroff said, shortly. “It looks as if we have to stay here.”

Saundra looked good as she dressed; his treacherous mind was too tired and sore to exercise proper discipline and banish the thoughts. It was only the two of them; they had remained chaste, but their relationship had developed well beyond senior-junior.

Madam Rose met them as they descended the stairs. “Morning,” she said, shortly. Her face split into a strange leer. “There’s breakfast on the table; help yourself, and then get back to bed.”

“Thank you,” Fanaroff said, as he took Saundra’s arm and guided her to the table. There was a massive pot of porridge on the table, something he had only had in England before; he took a small amount and filled Saundra’s bowl to the top. She needed her strength more than he did. “Any news from the outside?”

“Very little,” Madam Rose said. “There was a call for you on the phone; they want you to call them back as soon as you have had your breakfast.”

Fanaroff took a long breath. “Why didn’t you call us at once?”

“I don’t interrupt my customers when they are using the facilities, even if they are well-paying customers,” Madam Rose said tartly. “People who come here come for privacy; they don’t come for my conversation.” She slapped her belly. “I may have a belly that people come miles to see, and a strong right arm that some men find impossible to resist, but they don’t come for my conversation.”

And perhaps you wanted to try and get something out of them first, Fanaroff thought dryly. Madam Rose was a desperate woman, after all; her girls and herself would be caught in the path of the Russian advance, if what they had been told was true. Fanaroff was still having problems coming to grips with it, but if it was true, the German Army had been scattered and was in full retreat, assuming that it was still in existence. Fanaroff had reviewed the old war plans from the cold war; there would be no reinforcements from the other NATO allies, not now. The Germans were in real trouble.

“I’ll call them after we have finished eating,” he said. He wasn’t that hopeful; as far as he knew, there were no American assets that could be used to extract them, and the British had their own problems. He had thought about trying to get into one of the airports and stealing an aircraft, but without any IFF transponder, one or the other side would probably shoot them out of the sky. “Is there any other news?”

“I’m starting to think that it might be time to get out of the city,” Madam Rose said. “What about you?”

Fanaroff couldn't disagree. The criminal gangs had secured vast food supplies — and the girls had an easy way of paying for them — but everyone knew that it couldn’t last. There seemed to be no government people trying to pull everything back together again… and it seemed an impossible task anyway. The city had collapsed into a dozen semi-independent fiefdoms; it reminded him too much of the old No Man’s Land Batman movie.

But he said nothing. As soon as he had finished his breakfast, he picked up the satellite phone and carried it upstairs to their room, allowing Saundra to activate it while he remembered some of the identification words. The satellite phone might work using American satellites, but it was hardly a secure system; his controllers had been reluctant to give him too many details because the Russians might well be listening in to the transmissions. It made him long for the lost terminal; if he had had that, they would have had no problems at all in downloading information from the military datanet.

“This is Fanaroff,” he said shortly, and recited a string of identification numbers. “I understand that you wanted to talk to me?”

“Certainly,” a droll Texan voice said. “Who played George Washington in the university play you took part in back in 2010?”

Fanaroff had been surprised the first time he had been tossed such a question, a moment’s thought had explained why. It would be harder for a Russian imposter to figure out the answer in time to matter. “That was Shawn O’Neil,” he said, remembering. Fanaroff had wanted that part; but he had lost the draw and played Arnold the Traitor instead. “Do you have anything useful for me?”

“Friends of ours have been busy in Ostend,” the voice said, without bothering to comment on Fanaroff’s tone. “We have talked to them and they have agreed to pick you and your lady-friends up and get you back to mother if you get there within a few days. Failure to get there within five days may result in you being left to your own devices.”

Fanaroff took a second to unravel everything. Something was happening at Ostend; he guessed that the British had secured the small port and city, and they were willing to extract him and his ‘lady-friends’ — perhaps Madam Rose and her girls as well, if she had talked to the controller first — if he made it there. He scowled; the real problem with improvising a code was that it would be easy to either make it blatantly obvious, or confuse friends as well as enemies.

“I understand,” he said. If he were wrong, there would be a chance to steal a boat and set sail for England anyway. “Is there a lower limit?”

There was a pause. “The day-tourists are moving in now,” the controller said finally. “I would recommend haste; mother may have popped her clogs earlier than we thought.”

“I understand,” Fanaroff said again. “I’ll call you later.”

He closed the connection and thought for a long moment, then turned to face Saundra. “If I understood that bastard properly, we have a chance to get out if we can make it to Ostend,” he said, grimly. “I guess that the invitation includes Madam Rose and her girls… if they will come with us, if not, just the two of us.” He grinned. “Unless you wish to stay, of course…”

“Not bloody likely,” Saundra said. She looked less mussed than he did; Madam Rose would have made a fearsomely effective drill sergeant, unlike some commanding officers he’d met who had insisted on shaving every day, despite low water supplies. “I don’t want to stay in this place any longer.”

“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s go see Madam Rose.”

He explained the situation as clearly as he could to her. “We have this one chance and you’re included in the offer,” he said. “We can’t let anyone else know, because there would be panic; are you interested in coming?”

Madam Rose laughed. “I have been thinking about joining one of the boats leaving Belgium for England,” she said. “I’ll come with you, if the girls will come; if not, then… I can’t leave them here.”

“She’s a very strange woman,” Saundra muttered, as Madam Rose headed off to organise the girls. She hadn’t liked the thought of staying in a whorehouse, even if it had been safe and even fairly secure; female soldiers and officers were rarely comfortable with the chain of brothels that appeared everywhere that soldiers lived and worked. “What will happen to her if she remains here?”

“Die, probably,” Fanaroff muttered back. “Pussy is cheap in desperate times; someone might take the girls and leave her to die. This is her best chance to get out and she knows it.”

There were nine girls in all; seven of them native to Belgium, one whose family had come from darkest Africa, and one who had been from an Arab family that had thrown her out for premarital sex. She had been very lucky, the more so because Madam Rose had found her and offered her a job before she starved to death on the streets. She was apparently popular with the clients; Madam Rose had claimed with some pride that she brought in more money than the others put together. The conversation had gone downhill from there.

“Jade wants to return to her family,” Madam Rose said finally. “The others are willing to come with us. We have a truck and enough fuel, I think, to reach Ostend; keep your weapons visible and we won’t have any trouble.”

Fanaroff said nothing as the girls were loaded into the truck; Madam Rose herself took the wheel. They would be victims if they were caught by the Russians; he had seen some of the classified files of what had happened in Chechnya as a warning to all other Muslims in Russia and the CIS to behave themselves. There were rumours that the Russians had even begun a breeding program to breed loyal Russians who could blend in perfectly with Central Asia — and the new government had offered bounties and rewards to women who had more than three children who were pure Russian — and the girls would be treated as nothing more than whores. It was strange; most of the girls were quite well-educated, in their own way, and yet they had earned more lying on their backs rather than holding down a proper job.

He clutched his weapon tightly as the truck started to move out of the city. The criminals had cleared a path out of the city, but parts of the city were still in a state of lawlessness; in the future, he wondered what the Russians would do when they reached the capital of the European Union. He didn’t think it would be pleasant. The girls fell silent, lost in their own thoughts; Fanaroff almost understood their concern. They were leaving all that they had ever known and as for him…

He would never see the city again.

The helicopters swooped low over the beaches and came into land; a dozen heavily-armed soldiers jumped out of each one and fanned out across the beaches, which were almost deserted. A handful of people who had been nervously waiting for their boats to England screamed and panicked as the soldiers fanned out, running towards their targets as the first ships appeared, launching landing ships towards the beach while the advance guard raced through the facilities, rapidly securing their objectives and holding position. 3 Commando Brigade had arrived at Ostend.

“All targets secure, sir,” Captain Bellamy reported. The Royal Marines had had to put the mission together almost on the fly, but they had done well. The heavy equipment would be landed as quickly as the logisticians could land it from the ships. “The civilians seem very pleased to see us.”

“I’m not surprised,” Marine Colonel Patrick Trombly snapped. The civilians might have escaped some of the chaos, but the criminal gangs who had been trying to use Ostend as a place to send refugees to England had been terrorising the entire region as they offered their services… at the cost of everything the refugees owned. The Royal Navy had been working hard to steer the refugees to camps in Britain; some of the criminals had been literally dumping the refugees overboard as soon as they were out of sight of the coastline, and then coming back for more. “Remind the advance parties that they are not to go into Ostend itself; I’m not wasting lives fighting people in the city.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Bellamy said. He snapped out orders as more units arrived on the beach, heavy anti-aircraft units and light tanks, improved enough that they could exchange blows with Russian tanks on a fairly equal basis. They would be disintegrated if the Russians hit them, but they would get in at least one punch first; Trombly wasn’t happy at all about having them, but if the Russians reached them before they managed to pull out, they would need their firepower just to buy themselves a fighting chance. “There’s more refugees than we expected…”

“Have them kept well away from the beaches,” Trombly said, grimly. He had been on the ground during the retreat from Sudan and knew what would happen; desperate refugees would overwhelm his men through sheer weight of numbers if they thought that they were being abandoned. “We can pull out some refugees if we have time, but the main problem is withdrawing the remains of British forces before they get overwhelmed.”

He stared down at the display on the terminal in his hand. Major-General Langford had put out a request to shipping, and even he had been surprised at the response; hundreds of smaller ships had volunteered for the mission to Ostend. Britain’s merchant marine was no longer what it once had been; the attempt to replay Dunkirk would be much harder than it had been back in 1940… and that had not been easy. The Royal Marines had studied Dunkirk extensively and knew that repeating it would be tricky; the Germans had allowed the British the time they needed to escape. The Russians… might not make the same mistake.

The skies were clear; that wouldn’t last. Higher command had decided that if the RAF made a serious commitment to covering Ostend, the Russians would realise what was happening sooner and bring the full weight of their air force to bear on the evacuation ships. The nightmare would have no end; if the Russians managed to sink a dozen heavy ships, the remains of British forces would be trapped on the shore. He needed time… and Marine Colonel Patrick Trombly knew that time was the one thing the Russians wouldn’t give him.

A soldier ran up to him and nodded once; Marines were forbidden to salute anywhere where there might be an enemy sniper, looking for targets, such as senior officers. “Sir, the Yanks are here, and ten cunts,” he reported. “They were coming down the road when they met us…”

Trombly smiled. He hadn’t expected that that part of the mission would have worked; Belgium seemed to be as chaotic as the remainder of Europe. “Have them all checked, searched, and then moved to one of the helicopters returning to Britain,” he said. He smiled at the thought of the poor American explaining his travelling companions to his own people back in the States, or even in Britain; perhaps the girls were important, but he doubted it. “All we have to do here is wait.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier said, and dashed off again.

“Well, fuck me rigid,” Captain Bellamy said. “You know… I really thought that would fail and they wouldn't make it…”

“Let’s just hope the government drives a hard bargain,” Trombly said grimly. The thought of what might happen if — after — Europe fell worried him. Britain was weaker than it had been in centuries. “This is not going to end well.”