Corporal Max Weinberg was feeling exposed in the guardhouse. He knew, of course, that there was a reaction team in the barracks themselves, but the threat of a terrorist attack against the barracks had been judged to be minimal. Despite public belief, many of Britain’s high value targets, such as nuclear power plants, were very well guarded; several would-be terrorists had been caught and arrested trying to break into them under the impression that a fake ID was enough. The barracks, full of armed and very dangerous men, could normally look after themselves.
The CO of the base had triggered the alarms as soon as the first missile had appeared over the city; Weinberg had thought it was a drill at first until the CO had warned everyone that someone had fired at least one missile into Edinburgh… and then the airliner had come down. Weinberg himself had been born in Glasgow and felt more than a little disdain for Edinburgh, particularly during football season, but he wanted to find the people who had shot down an airliner and do horrible things to them. His stepfather had beaten social responsibility into him, turning him from a teenaged tearaway to a young soldier with a promising career ahead of him; he would do anything rather than let the old man down. He had fought in the Gulf; Weinberg himself had never seen action.
It was strange; he could see soldiers being lined up for emergency dispatch to help the handful of soldiers based at Edinburgh Castle on the inside, and outside everything was proceeding as normal. Weapons and emergency kits were being issued on the inside; the cars and buses were running as normal on the outside. It was almost eerie, unreal; had anyone really expected to be attacked in Edinburgh? The city hadn’t even had a terrorist attack since the Scottish Liberation Army had managed to blow themselves up while trying to build a bomb. There was even a delivery van coming to make its regular delivery of supplies to the barracks.
Weinberg stepped forward as the van turned into the gate. The driver seemed different, more intent, but he put that down to nerves. It was a different man from normal, but the company kept rotating their staff to avoid having to pay any benefits; Weinberg sympathised with them. The British Army did the same thing; the Generals and other senior officers got fat bonuses, the common infantryman got peanuts. It just didn’t seem right.
“You can’t stop here today,” he called, as the driver looked at him. There was something in his expression that Weinberg really didn’t like. His senses were starting to warn him that there was trouble here; carefully, he prepared his rifle so that he could bring it up within seconds. “There’s been an accident.”
“Allah Ackbar,” the driver said. Weinberg felt his blood run cold. This wasn't just trouble, it was a suicide attack! He hit the emergency button on his radio as the driver leered at him. “Long live the Jihad!”
Weinberg was still bringing up his rifle when the bomb detonated. He was atomised instantly and the blast tossed hundreds of infantrymen into the air, killing or seriously wounding those unlucky enough to be caught in the open. The second van drove into the barracks and headed directly for the main building; this time, soldiers managed to open fire and kill the driver, unaware that there was a dead man’s switch on the bomb. Moments after the driver died, the bomb detonated and shattered the remains of the main building, killing and disorientating hundreds more young soldiers.
It was only the beginning.
Chapter Twelve: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take Three
[The Race Relations Bill] is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’
Manchester, United Kingdom
Darren Cooper hated Pakistanis.
It was all the more curious that Cooper had never spent much time with any Pakistani — or Indian, or Bangladesh, or indeed any Asian at all — before developing this hatred. Like many British, he had rarely socialised with any outside school, but his history with them had already been set in stone. Darren Cooper had lost his father to one.
He remembered it as he drove though the streets, looking for their target. His father had been a policeman, back when that had been a respected profession; the young Darren had idealised his father. He had only vague memories of him now; a tall man who had had a beard and a smile and loved his only son. When Cooper had been seven years old, and preparing to go to school, his father had gone into an Asian household with his partner. It hadn’t been anything, but routine; no one had expected trouble.
There had been different accounts of what had actually happened, but Cooper knew which one he believed. As Cooper Senior asked questions, his partner had stumbled over something, evidence of terrorist or small-scale criminal activity. Even then, a drug smuggler would be very unlucky to get more than a few years in prison; terrorists had been sucking money in from the Social Services while plotting the downfall of British civilisation. One of the inhabitants of the house had leapt at him and stabbed him; Cooper Senior had tried to restrain him, sending the attacker reeling to the floor, where he bashed his head against the ground. It had killed him.
Cooper had been too young to understand just what had happened then. The incident had shocked the area; Cooper Senior had become the scapegoat for the charge of police brutality, cut loose from all of the backing he had had a right to expect from his superiors. They had wanted to appease the Asian vote and so Cooper Senior had been stripped of rank, hauled before a kangaroo court and convicted of manslaughter. He hadn’t lasted a month in jail before one of the other inmates had cut his throat in a gruesome revenge killing; Cooper Senior had taken his job seriously.
“Yes, this is the place,” he muttered, as the seven of them reached their target. He glanced at his watch; like all of the members of ‘rent-a-mob,’ insofar as it had members, he had synchronised it with the other watches. “Get ready.”
Cooper had grown up a marked man. Already predisposed to hate Asians — although his first girlfriend had been as black as the night — he had swiftly converted that hatred into an all-encompassing hatred of Islam. It was easy for him to see how Islam was devoted to taking over the world; it never occurred to him that young Muslim men had similarly deluded views about the western world. With poor grades in school, only the determination of the Labour Government that every child had a university education had ensured him a place in Manchester University; there, he had seen more signs of infiltration and the subversion of British values, as defined by his father, who had done his duty, by Muslims. He was literally incapable of seeing the world though a clear lens.
He remembered, as they checked their weapons, his father-in-law. The man had been all glitz and nonsense at first sight, but he had learned quickly; his mother’s husband — it was impossible to think of him as ‘dad’ — was one of the leading lights of the National Front. Cooper had gravitated towards the National Front with glee; he had few prospects and fewer skills, apart from cracking heads. He might have a university degree that was almost worthless — degrees had become more and more worthless every year — but his taste for violence was almost insatiable. Only the belief that the Army, too, had been perverted by Islam had prevented him from signing up; as it was, by twenty years of age, he had a string of assault charges to his name, mainly racist attacks.