Armageddon?? (90 page)

“My
apologies, Mrs McManus, a habit from a previous posting.” Lethbridge-Stewart
replied. “How is your survey team getting on?”

“Apology
accepted, Brigadier.

“I
just wanted to thank you for your assistance. I understand that you are very
busy with rescue and recovery duties, not to mention Law and Order and
providing a cordon, yet you have managed to spare manpower and vehicles to
escort my team.” Keavy McManus told him.

“Always
nice to be appreciated by the best in their business, Mrs McManus.” The
Brigadier told her. “Your work is extremely important; we need to learn how to
deal with events like this. I Think you must have heard the news from Detroit,
we can be sure that it won’t be the last attack of its kind.”

Western
Sheffield, United Kingdom.  The convoy transporting the survey team halted as
it prepared to take more readings of the lava that covered much of the city.
The army had managed to provide a rather eclectic group of vehicles from those
it had assembled at the airport. Leading the group was a Land Rover SNATCH 2,
carrying some of the RMP escort, which was followed by two Saxon Patrol APCs,
which carried the personnel and equipment of the survey team; various aerials
and sensors now poked out from the roof hatches; and a Fuchs Reconnaissance
Vehicle, its NBC sensors adapted to detect the various products the portal was
spewing out, the rest of the RMP escort was carried in a Vector armored patrol
vehicle. Bringing up the rear was a Trojan Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers,
the engineer variant of the Challenger 2. It was there in case anything large
and heavy needed to be moved out of the way, it also had a GPMG mounted in a
Remote Weapons Station which might come in handy.

Staff
Sergeant John Mann, Royal Military Police, was not in a particularly good mood
as he watched the survey team, who were all wearing protective suits, dismount
from the two Saxons and start taking readings, assisted by some members of 1st
Royal Tank Regiment, who manned the Fuchs, from the Land Rover. Mann was a
senior member of a Special Investigation Branch (known in the RMP as the
‘Branch’, and in the wider army as ‘Shit In Bulk’) team based in Midlands
Command and felt that he should not be here; his job was to catch criminals in
uniform, not shepherd civilian scientists. However he had been available and
many of his team had been dispatched to the city to reinforce members of a
Territorial Army Provost Company. What Mann had seen today reminded him of
something out of a disaster movie, or one of those nuclear war docudramas that
had been popular during the Cold War. One image that had stayed with him was
the sight of a Traffic Warden cradling an old SLR as he guarded a group of
looters Were they really so short of manpower that somebody had decided to arm
the Traffic Wardens?

Mann
put on his mask and stepped out of the Land Rover, intending to check on the
troops under his command. He trusted his fellow SIB and RMP soldiers, but he
was not sure about the men from the Military Provost Guard Service sent to
bolster the escort. Although they were exclusively recruited from ex-servicemen
they usually spent their days guarding base entrances and patrolling
perimeters. He leaned back into the Land Rover and grabbed his L1A2 battle
rifle; the TA and MPGS members of the escort still had L85A2s, L86A2s and Light
Machine Guns, all 5.56mm weapons, but as regulars Mann and his team were
entitled to the latest small arms.

“Anything
interesting happening, Sergeant?” Mann asked one of the senior NCOs manning the
defensive perimeter.

“Not
a thing, Staff, apart from some poor moggy that must have been killed by
something.” Sergeant Jo McDonagh, a fellow member of Mann’s investigation team,
replied.

“I
reckon everyone must have self-evacuated out of here long ago; it was a pretty
well to do area so I hope nobody has been stupid enough to… Hey you three! Yes
you, halt!”

Sergeant
McDonagh flinched as Mann suddenly yelled at full volume. His was a voice
feared throughout the whole of the SIB. She spotted that he was yelling at
three youths who had emerged from a house just beyond the perimeter carrying
some plastic bags, they looked over their shoulders, saw the soldiers and
started to run.

Mann
and McDonagh brought up their rifles, as did the other Red Caps present.

“Halt,
or I fire!” Mann yelled.

The
Emergency Powers only required that a member of the Security Forces give one
warning before opening fire, and in extreme circumstances they could fire
without a warning. Mann technically obeyed the instructions, his shot coincided
with the implied exclamation mark at the end of his shout. The .338 Lapua
Magnum round inflicted terrible damage on the body of the looter. He was dead
before he hit the ground. The other two stopped in their tracks, dropped what
they were carrying and put their hands up. Mann strode up to them and delivered
a swift smack in the small of their backs with his rifle butt, knocking them to
the ground.

“Do
you two idiots know the penalty for looting then?” He snarled to the two
terrified survivors. “Search and cuff them.” He ordered the other Redcaps.
“Sergeant, search the house in case there are more of them in there.”

“Yes,
Staff.” McDonagh replied.

Sergeant
McDonagh led half a dozen Redcaps into the semi-detached house. With the power
cut it was eerily quiet, though there was the distant sound of dripping water.

“Clear!”
Each soldier shouted as he, or she cleared a room.

“There’s
a door here, Sarge.” A corporal said to McDonagh. “I reckon it leads to a
basement.”

“Right,
Corporal, you go first. I’ll cover you.” McDonagh ordered, turning on the torch
attached to her L1A2.

The
Corporal kicked in the door.

“On
the floor! Nobody move!” He yelled as he charged through the door, Sergeant
McDonagh close behind him.

He
swung his L85A2 around the room until the torch tapped to it illuminated the
body of a middle aged man. His head had been caved in.

“Oh
shit!” The Corporal breathed.

“Maybe
later, Corporal, but now I think we’d better tell the Staff about this.”

“There
were three bodies, Staff.” McDonagh said to Mann a few minutes later. “They’d
been sheltering in their basement, who knows why. There was a middle aged man
and woman, I presume husband and wife; they’d both had their heads caved in;
and an old woman, looked like she was in her late seventies, or early
eighties.”

“Had
they killed her too?” Mann asked, the disgust dripping from his voice.

“There
were no signs of violence, it looks like a heart attack.”

Mann
kicked the nearest of the two looters savagely, hard enough to break his ribs.

“Is
this your handiwork, you scum?”

“No,
they were already like that when we got here!” The looter with broken ribs said
through clenched teeth.

“It
were ‘im!” The other looter protested, indicating the dead man.

“Get
these two pricks out of here before I do something they regret.” Mann snarled
at the other Redcaps, before storming back to his wagon.

“You
heard the Staff, get them moving.” McDonagh ordered. “And don’t forget to bring
the evidence.”

One
of the MPGS soldiers searched through the plastic carriers. Rather surprisingly
one of them was filled with food rather than valuables.

“There’s
a packet of crisps in here.” He said to his ‘oppo’, holding up the bag.

“What
flavour?”

“Prawn
cocktail.”

“They
would be, I hate prawn cocktail.

“We’d
better get a shift on before Mr Nasty notices we’re dawdling.”

“Did
you get their names?” Mann asked McDonagh a few minutes later. “The stiffs, I
mean?”

The
sergeant reached into the pocket of her DPM jacket and pulled out a crumpled
piece of paper.

“I
found a gas bill by the door, it seems that they were a Mr and Mrs Beckett.”

“Well
hopefully that should help us to locate next of kin; as for the bodies, we’ll
just have to let command deal with that.”

Sixth
ring of Hell.  Corporal Louis Hoffman paused as he spotted some movement ahead,
dropping to the ground and signalling the rest of the patrol to halt and take
cover. In this part of Hell is was probably a baldrick patrol and while the
patrol from Air Troop, G Squadron, 22 SAS, had enough strength and firepower to
deal with any isolated group of baldricks they did not want to draw attention
to themselves, at least not yet anyway.  Hoffman carefully swung his L1A2
battle rifle from left to right, scanning the ground ahead. Neither his eyes,
nor the Combined Weapon Sight fitted to the rifle revealed anything.

“What
is it, Louie?” The voice of Captain Patrick Fleming, the patrol commander, said
in his headset.

“Thought
I saw some movement ahead, Boss.” Hoffman replied. “I’m not sure now.”

“Seeing
things now are we, Louie?” The voice of Staff Sergeant Henry ‘Don’t call me
Henno’ Garvie remarked. “Better safe than sorry, though.

“Dave,
go forward and support Louis. See if you can spot what’s up there.”

Now
that the forces of Satan were on the back-foot, Hell was crawling with human
Special Forces, and Britain was one of the major providers. Patrols from both
the Special Air Service and Special Boat Service were roaming the areas of Hell
assigned to the UK, gathering intelligence and rescuing inmates where ever
possible. The Special Reconnaissance Regiment had established a number of
Observation Posts from where they could watch the comings and goings of Hell’s
military forces, and direct attacks when necessary, while the Paras, Marines
and RAF Regiment Gunners of the UK Special Forces Support Group were on
stand-by to support any patrol that got into difficulty, or add extra muscle to
any attack.

The
various UK Special Forces patrols had already managed to rescue quite a few
former military personnel, who had been marked down as a priority for recovery.
These deceased personnel had then been transferred via portal to a safe area
near the Hellmouth for rehabilitation. Encouragingly many, mainly amongst the
more recently arrived, had volunteered their services.

The
Staff & Personnel Support Branch of the Adjutant General's Corps now had
the headache of working out the back-pay and allowances of these deceased
soldiers. There had also been suggestions that it might be possible to use some
of these troops as battle casualty replacements for units deployed in Hell, or
to form new units. That didn’t solve the legal problems of course, after all,
how does one pay the dead for their services and what were the limits on
service terms? Technically, those who were being found in Hell hadn’t yet
fulfilled the terms of their enlistments and that raised even more legal
questions. It was reputed that several members of the Pay Corps and Legal
branch had already gone mad trying to think out the implications.

Corporal
David ‘Dave’ Woolston carefully made his way forward. He was a large,
powerfully built man of Afro-Caribbean extraction, and thus was one of the two
members of the patrol carrying a GPMG, in this case the new L7A3 variant, which
was chambered for the same 8.58mm round as the L1A2.

“Spread
out, but be careful, we don’t know what we are dealing with.” Captain Fleming
ordered.

“Wait,
I see something.” The patrol’s sniper, Corporal Finn Younger reported.

Corporal
Younger normally carried an L115A1 Long Range Rifle, though for the deployment
to Hell he had decided to draw an AW50F from the armory at Credenhill. It gave
him an extra reach and the 12.7x99 Raufoss Mk.211 rounds it fired were
extremely powerful.

Younger
lined his weapon up on the target, preparing to fire if necessary. However to
his surprise the figure in the sight resolved itself into a human shape rather
than a baldrick. Even more surprisingly the figure seemed to be moving
tactically rather than in the way a civilian might cross a piece of terrain.

“I
think we have possible friendly forces ahead, Boss.” Younger reported.

“Right
everybody, carefully stand-up, its time to reveal ourselves.” Fleming ordered.
“Staff, Fin, Dave, Pete, you stay down for now to give us covering fire.”

The
rest of the patrol slowly got to their feet to discover that they were being
observed by two figures that were definitely human.

“Who
are you?” Captain Fleming called out.

“Sergeant
Tony Stevens, 2nd Royal Irish Rangers! Who are you?”

“Captain
Patrick Fleming, Special…I mean 1st Scots Guards.”

“You’re
one of THEM, eh, Sir.” The filthy bedraggled figure replied. “Don’t worry I
have heard of you, I died back in 1978, an IRA sniper.

“This
is Corporal James Beveridge of the Royal Engineers.”

The
other figure nodded.

“If
you want any tunnelling done, I’m your man.” The engineer said. “Still that’s
what did for me in the end, bloody Bosche heard us coming and blew up ma
tunnel.”

“How
many of there are you?” Fleming asked.