Katy closed her eyes.
Nicholas Donavan had never quite gotten used to his position as Prime Minister. He had never seriously expected that the Liberal Democrats would become the party in power, and indeed, some of its power was only maintained through an alliance with the Greens and the Socialists. Labour might have been pretty much discredited by the failures of both Blair and Brown — the disaster in Sudan had only put an end to that particular government — but the Conservatives had been going from strength to strength recently, as had the BNP. Donavan knew that the economic crisis was growing worse; people were starting to look towards the more extreme parties for government…
It didn’t seem fair. Donavan had once had ideals, but government work had drained most of them out of his soul. He had had hopes of turning Britain into a truly progressive society, but Britain had proved very resistant to change; his hand had been forced or held back on dozens of occasions. He had wanted to create a land with social justice for everyone, only to discover that people wanted social justice for themselves, but not necessarily for everyone else. There were times when it seemed like the news was a constant funeral dirge for Britain; racism, sexism and worse stalked Britain's streets…
Europe didn’t make matters any easier. Didn’t they see, he asked himself, that Europe was the only way forward? America couldn’t be depended on any more; Pakistan had learned that lesson, even after an American serviceman had raped a British girl. The world needed a counterbalance to American power, and Europe was the only real contender, but… didn’t they see? It seemed as if even the Euro-Socialists didn’t realise the dangers, while the other local governments were proving resistant to greater integration. A United States of Europe still seemed like a dream…
An alarm rang. He started, and then flinched as two armed men raced into his room. He opened his mouth to protest, but they grabbed him and pulled him to his feet, half-carrying him down the stairs to the stares of astonished civil servants. Donavan had been due a meeting with the Home Secretary in an hour; the Home Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister were in Parliament, addressing a packed house on the measures that the government intended to take to resolve the Falklands Island Crisis peacefully. Surely, if Britain gave up something…
He forced his mind back to the present. “What are you doing?”
“There’s an incoming attack,” one of the men said. He was one of Ten Downing Street’s security staff. “We have to get you into the shelter!”
The alarm was making it hard to think. “An attack?” Donavan asked. “Who’s attacking us?”
“I don’t fucking know,” the man snapped. Donavan didn’t know who he was; in all the years of government, he had never bothered to talk to any of the security staff, viewing them as holdovers from the day that a British Prime Minister was among the top ten targets for assassination. “We got a warning that there was a cruise missile incoming and we have to get you into the bunker…”
They had reached the top of the second set of stairs, leading down into the basement and the bunker below. “I can’t just…” Donavan protested. His legs seemed to refuse to move; he cursed his lack of exercise even as the two guards picked him up and carried him down. “I can’t… I need to talk to my family!”
“You must,” the man snapped. “There’s no time and we’re being jammed and all hell is breaking loose…”
The first missile struck Ten Downing Street. It had been designed as a bunker-busting warhead; it punched through the façade of the normal, civilian, house and buried itself in the masonry before exploding. The blast tore through the complex, sending shockwaves down into the tunnel system and collapsing many of the tunnels; for those in the bunker, the roof caved in and crushed them before they even had a moment to know that they were dead. The second missiles struck moments later; its warhead was different, a compressed fuel-air explosive mixture that detonated just before hitting the ground, sending a wave of super-hot flame blasting out across Whitehall. It was almost like being at ground zero of a nuclear detonation.
No one ever found a trace of Nicholas Donavan.
The skyscraper apartment was luxurious; Zachary Lynn loved it and so did the girls he brought back to the apartment on a fairly regular basis. He had a habit of relaxing by picking up girls in the nearby nightclubs; one of them, Faye Martin, lay on the double-bed, quite naked. Lynn would have liked to have spent more time with her, but duty called; only the cold awareness that tomorrow might be his last day on Earth had prompted him to pick up Faye. She had been a good lay, but there had been an understanding; there would be no permanent relationship.
He stared down over London and saw them coming; the first of the missiles. His hackers had gone to work already, attacking the computers that made up the most important and vulnerable part of the defence network; it looked as if they had succeeded, although the fact that the British hadn’t been on war alert had certainly played a role in the success. He knew very little about the overall plan, but he did know that thirty missiles had been targeted on London… and they were coming down like rain.
The skyscraper shook as the first explosion echoed over the city. The first missiles had been targeted on government buildings; it was vitally important to kill as many government ministers as they could. The British politician was a strange beast; some of them even had the iron determination that had characterised Britain, years ago. The Houses of Parliament had been meeting to discuss the Falklands — Lynn knew that the Government would have been happy to give away the islands, if the MPs would have allowed it — and he doubted that many of them would survive the explosion and fires spreading through Whitehall. Other missiles were coming down now; the PJHQ, the various barracks scattered throughout the city, even New Scotland Yard… all of them had been targeted.
He smiled and lifted his mobile phone. It had been produced by the Americans; the British mobile phone networks were either down or about to fail, while the BBC and the independent television and radio channels had also been targeted. As London started to burn under his gaze, he sent a simple text message; go.
The building shook again. A sleepy voice came from the bed. “What’s happening?”
“London town is falling down,” Lynn said, and laughed. The chaos had only just begun. “Why don’t you and me celebrate?”
The alarm had shocked Inspector David Briggs out of a doze in the rear of the mobile command post. They had deployed to set up security for a protest march later in the week, one that would have gone back to Hyde Park and the Mall; he had been tasked, again, with overseeing the procedures. He was starting to think that it was a punishment; certainly, some of his subordinates had had to help the overworked park workers clearing up after the last protest. There were parts of Hyde Park that looked as if they were a rubbish dump.
He glared down at the console, wondering what the hell was going on; that code meant military emergency, but what military emergency? A terrorist attack? He knew the procedure for an attack; all units had to report in to the nearest command post, and then await orders. He hit the key transmitting their location to New Scotland Yard… and then looked up. Something had registered in his mind… and then he saw it, a streak of light crossing the sky, heading towards Westminster and Buckingham Palace. He stared, unable to quite believe his eyes, as the streak of light vanished… and moments later, an explosion shook the ground.