Down: Trilogy Box Set (142 page)

“Walk this way,” another trooper had ordered. “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

The older woman had stared at their uniforms.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“We’re SAS,” Finch said.

“Our SAS? From home? From England?”

“Jesus,” a trooper exclaimed to his mates. “They’re not Hellers.”

“Come closer,” Finch had said. “Need to give you the sniff test, luv.”

The two women had worked in a seamstress and alteration shop in Upminster and were among the first wave shuttled across when the hot zone opened up. They had congregated with a few hundred of their fellow travelers, wandering about dazed and utterly confused on the outskirts of a small medieval-looking village until Hellers from the village descended on them. At first the villagers had thought these were the recent dead, worth a pretty penny to the sweepers who’d be along on their regular rounds. When they descended on them, the Earthers had scattered into the nearby woods, screaming in terror. Most of them had been rounded up quickly enough. But very soon the Hellers had realized these people were not dead. And then one village man said he had witnessed another villager who was tramping through the high grass looking for new arrivals, disappearing into thin air. Some of the wiser men connected the events and surmised that a miracle had occurred, a passageway had opened, and soon the braver ones were launching themselves into the hot zone because almost anything was better than their grim existence.

The two seamstresses, the owner and her employee, had made it into the woods where they had been hiding since their arrival, sustaining themselves on brook water, mushrooms, and grubs. They had heard the shouts of other Earthers when they had been captured and worse—cries of pain and anguish one night, when unbeknownst to them, a band of rovers had found some Earthers hiding in the vicinity. They had also heard the gunshots of the SAS when C Group established their perimeter but they had feared it was just more brutes after them.

“Yeah, you’re one of us,” Finch had declared. “You’re safe now. We’re the good guys. Let’s have a look at your arm, luv. Looks like a flesh wound. We’ll patch you up quick enough.”

“But where are we?” the older woman had said, trying to protect her modesty with the few pieces of non-synthetic fabric she was wearing. “We don’t know what’s happening. It’s been a nightmare.”

“Come with us,” Finch had said. “The captain will explain everything and then we’ll be sending you home, I expect.”

“Home?” the younger woman had said. “Really?”

Greene had given the women a bare-bones explanation of the situation while his medic bandaged the young woman’s arm. He hadn’t been too sure if the shell-shocked woman had understood what he was saying but it hardly mattered.

He had pointed toward the center of the large field his men were encircling. “Look, I want you ladies to walk that direction. We can’t go with you. One instant you’ll be here, the next you’ll be back where you belong in Upminster. As far as we understand it, you won’t be flung back here but I wouldn’t take any chances. Run as fast as you can away from town. The army will be surrounding the area. Identify yourself as victims. Tell them you’ve just spoken to Captain Greene, 22 SAS Regiment. Tell them our mission is progressing well and that we are armed with AK-47s. Do you think you can remember that?”

And then the soldiers had watched the women walking into the hot zone, helping them along with shouts of encouragement, and cheering when they had disappeared.

Some days later, the group had experienced another incident. A pair of troopers had been patroling the perimeter of the zone in the eastern quadrant when one of them, a trooper named Kendrick, took a step and disappeared, leaving behind his rifle, a spare magazine, and a knife.

Greene had been summoned and came running to the scene shouting orders for everyone at the perimeter to withdraw a hundred yards. Then he had subjected Kendrick’s partner to a harsh interrogation.

Had Kendrick gone AWOL? Had he talked about abandoning the mission? Had he given any hint of instability?

But Kendrick was a gung ho squaddie, not a man to bail on his mates and Greene had concluded that an expanding hot zone had snared him. He widened the perimeter further and had ordered Kendrick’s rifle be abandoned where it lay.

On this misty morning Greene was awoken by shouts from one of the perimeter guards.

It was Trooper Finch yelling, “Captain, come here. You’re not going to believe it.”

Greene ran through the mist and pulled up laughing at the sight of Trooper Kendrick coming toward him, waving his retrieved AK-47.

“Did you miss me, Captain?” Kendrick said with a shit-eating grin.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Greene said. “Tell me what happened.”

“I bring you greetings from the bloody prime minister,” Kendrick said. “That’s right. Hazel Kendrick’s son, little Kenny Kendrick, was drinking cups of tea yesterday with Prime Minister Lester, the defense secretary, and a room full of generals, explaining everything what’s happened since we got here. They wanted to send me up to Balmoral to see the bloody queen but I said, no way, I wanted to rejoin my unit ’cause I miss eating horrible, stringy venison.”

Finch shook his head. “I always thought you were a complete wanker, Kenny. Turns out I was right.”

Greene was about to ask Kendrick for a full debrief when there were distant shouts from the northern quadrant and then a single AK rifle shot, their signal of an attack. The captain ordered Kendrick to follow him in a clockwise route around the perimeter and Finch and the other soldier to travel counterclockwise, sweeping up the other patrols along the way.

When Greene and Kendrick got closer to the north quadrant the mist had lifted enough to see the nature of the threat.

“Fuck me,” Kendrick said.

“Glad you came back?” Greene said, snapping back his bolt carrier and sighting his rifle.

Hundreds of men were approaching on foot and on horseback, the closest ones a hundred yards away now. Greene had no way of knowing it, but three rival East Anglian barons from Colchester, Ipswich, and Bury St. Edmunds had buried the hatchet to mount a joint attack on the Upminster crossing point.

“Spread out, every twenty yards!” Greene shouted to his assembling men. “Single shots only! Don’t waste ammo! The ones on horseback are likely the big men! Take them out first! Let’s try to turn them! On my mark, fire!”

The Duke of Suffolk slithered on his belly and fully extended the brass tubes of his spyglass. He was on a hillock overlooking the village of Leatherhead and the surrounding meadowlands. It was midday and though it was not bright in the conventional sense, it was as bright a morning as it ever got in Hell. The first men he saw through his glass were sitting outside a small teepee-like structure fashioned from long branches. They were cooking something over a campfire. He couldn’t be sure but he thought one of the soldiers had a moustache and might be the captain William the forger had spoken of. He shifted his gaze to a pair of men with rifles on slings patroling a featureless patch of meadow and then visually worked his way around a large circular perimeter, spying pairs of soldiers spaced quite far apart from one another.

When he was done he handed his spyglass to the Duke of Oxford and asked for his opinion.

Oxford was subordinate to Suffolk but had made his contempt for his superior apparent. Suffolk had been born to nobility and King Henry inherently trusted a man with a good pedigree. That is why Henry gave him command of all his field and naval assets following the recent demise of the Duke of Norfolk at the hands of John Camp.

In death, the Duke of Oxford had achieved the prominence he had found elusive in life. Absent high birth, he had been a mere major with the 17
^th
Lancers during the Crimean War and had been at the infamous charge of the Light Brigade. In Hell his military skills had caught the attention of Henry who elevated him time and again until he was given the duchy of Oxford and was made Henry’s field commander. Suffolk regarded the pugnacious Oxford as a potential rival and distrusted him immensely. But he had to admit he was an able cavalryman. Suffolk was a navy man and here on dry land he all but admitted his insecurity about field tactics by seeking Oxford’s opinion.

Oxford’s flat, broken nose and thrusting chin gave him a menacing look. He finished his spyglass survey and said with his customary arrogance, “If these guns of theirs are as powerful as we have been given to believe, then it would be foolhardy to mount an attack on foot or horseback. I will bring up my four-pounders and demi-culverins and train them on any group of two or more of the enemy. Once we have thinned the herd we may consider mounting a charge.”

“Very well,” Suffolk said. “You may proceed.”

Captain Gatti was chewing a mouthful of rabbit when he heard the first artillery boom. He stood, spit out the brown meat, and shouted, “Incoming!” before the canister charge loaded with musket balls unleashed a shower of metal at the teepee. The trooper standing next to him fell, his right leg blown away at the knee.

Gatti called for the medic but he realized he was out on perimeter patrol. The captain ordered his men to stay low and ripped off his jacket, using the sleeve as a tourniquet.

“Stay with me,” Gatti told the glassy-eyed young man.

“Captain, I …”

“Don’t talk. We’re going to get you out of here.”

At the sound of another cannon blast, Gatti threw himself over the injured soldier. The canister charge spewed metal over their heads.

Gatti called to the three soldiers nearby who were pressed flat into the tall grass. “We’ve got to evac Everly. Maxwell, you’re going to be the one to do it.”

The trooper protested but Gatti repeated the order.

“I’ll come back,” Maxwell said.

“Don’t worry about that now,” Gatti shouted, “both of you get him close to the HZ and Maxwell, you bring him home.”

Before they were deployed, the squadron had drilled on evacuation plans. “This isn’t a suicide mission,” their Officer Commander, Major Gus Parker-Burns had said. “I expect that critically injured men will be evacuated if at all possible. The boffins tell me it appears that one will be able to re-enter the hot zone from the other side without immediately boomeranging back. Don’t understand it, but I don’t need to.”

Maxwell and the other two soldiers picked the injured man off the ground and began running toward the hot zone. Gatti fired off a single shot from his rifle, the signal for the group to muster, and his men began circumnavigating the perimeter of the hot zone, running toward the shredded teepee, keeping low.

Oxford’s cannon continued to rain metal down on the SAS. Gatti signaled for his assembling troops to keep spread out. The captain found his sergeant and sprawled beside him in the grass.

“Their cannon are up on that hill,” Gatti said. “It’s about a quarter mile, well out of our range. We can’t all stay here or we’re done for. Take three men and sweep around from the east. Use the high grass as cover. Have Evans take three men and sweep from the west. I’ll stay down here with the rest of them to draw their fire. On your mark, rake them with crossfire. Now go.”

Gatti looked toward the hot zone. The two troopers had helped Maxwell get Everly over his shoulder and now Maxwell was making his way past the outermost edge of the hot zone.

“Keep going, keep going,” Gatti said out loud.

A cannon shot targeting them landed awfully close. Maxwell fell, dumping Everly.

“Come on, get up,” Gatti said, and Maxwell did just that, slowly lifting the wounded man again.

He kept stumbling forward and suddenly, twenty yards into the hot zone, they disappeared.

Gatti looked into the gray sky and mouthed a thank you.

Suffolk was getting irate. He had been leaning against a tree, using his spyglass to track the cannon fire but he was having trouble spotting the enemy soldiers hunkered down in the dense meadow grasses. Every so often he saw a head pop up and exhorted Oxford to change his aiming point.

“The grass cover is making this devilishly difficult,” Oxford complained. “Perhaps we are striking home, perhaps not. In any event, we must persist. They will be hoping we ….”

A shot rang out and his half of Oxford’s head was gone. Then a volley of persistent AK-47 fire drove Suffolk onto the ground. He began crawling but couldn’t decide which way to go. The gunfire seemed to be coming from all directions.

“Get me my horse!” he screamed. “My horse!”

Suffolk’s soldiers and artillerymen were in disarray, running wildly, trying to escape the withering fire. The SAS slowly and methodically advanced, tightening the pincer vise.

The duke heard a whinny and raised his head, amazed to see that one of his soldiers had indeed fetched his stallion. As the man was about to hand over the reins, he was rewarded for his loyalty by being shot in the stomach.

“Help me,” the man cried, but the duke snatched the reins and mounted the horse.

Suffolk kicked the animal hard and took off, veering around trees, trampling wounded men, and not looking back until he was down the hillock, fleeing Leatherhead at a full gallop. When finally safe he began muttering to himself. “Disaster. Unmitigated disaster. Except of course for losing Oxford. Most welcome, that.”

Ben’s security convoy was approaching Thames House through the empty streets of London when urgent calls began hitting his phone. He had been deep in thought with images of Polly in his mind, cold and dead under her duvet. But the call from Drone Warfare Centre, followed within seconds by a call from the prime minister, wiped the slate clean.

“Yes, sir, I actually have them on hold,” Ben said. “Shall I conference them in?”

When he had both parties on the line he listened to the alarming news. A minute later, his car pulled inside MI5 headquarters and he kept the line open as he hurried down to the ops centre to see with his own eyes what everyone had been talking about.

The aerial view of Upminster showed hundreds of men running and walking down Station Road and St. Marys Lane.