Ted Bell - Warlord

And this lot of foreigners, his "clients," you think they knew beans about his dad? Fat bleeding chance. Born in Bedford during a 1918 Zeppelin airship raid, drama would follow him to the end of his days. In the Battle of Britain, he became a right legend, he did, posted to an American squadron flying P-51 Mustangs. He was known for flying just ten feet off the ground to avoid German radar, strafing enemy trains, boats, and military convoys, whatever he set his sights on.

But the truly amazing thing about his old man? He figured out how to take out the Nazi doodlebug flying bombs! He'd destroy them in flight by poking them with his wingtips! Now that was something. Earned him the nickname "Tip it in Terry" and national acclaim as one of Britain's most striking daredevils.

Maybe Sunni and the Scimitars could sing a song about that.

AN HOUR LATER, AFTER AN UNEVENTFUL CRUISE, Pudge was nearing the Lambeth Bridge. Sunni had stayed in the wheelhouse with Terry for the entire voyage, over in the corner whispering on his mobile most of the time, while the band members had come topside and stretched out atop the main hatch cover, getting some sun and talking quietly among themselves.

"Captain," Sunni said. "Unexpected stop. Seems my drummer slept in this morning and missed the lorry. He's waiting for us now on the Lambeth Pier just beyond the bridge."

Terry looked ahead, gauging his distance and the time it would take to slow the big barge. For some reason, he noticed, the band members had slid the big hatch open and disappeared down into the cavernous hold.

"Wish you'd told me sooner," Terry said, throwing the engines hard astern, slowing the big barge just as her bow passed under the busy Lambeth bridge. Water was boiling at her stern as he put the helm over to starboard and lined up on the pier. Sure enough, there was another scruffy musician waiting there.

Pudge's sole crewman had two lines ready and looped one neatly over the top of a bollard and cleated another as Terry eased her alongside the pier. It was a right nice piece of seamanship considering. The drummer leaped aboard and helped the mate free the lines. Terry gave her big diesels a bit of throttle and pulled away from the pier. No maritime traffic in either direction right now, so he headed right to the center of the river to begin the final leg of his journey up to Hampton Court. Be glad when it was over. Something about the whole charter had seemed wrong from the beginning. It was just too-

The captain felt cold steel pressure at the back of his skull and knew immediately that he had made a very terrible mistake. He heard the pistol, a round going into the chamber of the automatic.

"Full stop, Captain," Sunni Khan said. "Or I'll happily blow your brains out."

"Who the bloody hell are you people?" Terry roared, all of the pent-up anger at what was happening to his country bursting forth at once.

"Sword of Allah, Captain, that's what's happening."

"Sword of Allah. Right. Same blokes who killed all those hundreds of people at Heathrow last year."

"They died for a great cause."

"They died for shit, you filthy little bugger."

Sunni jammed the pistol painfully into his temple and said, "Stop this boat, Captain, now!"

Terry hauled back on the throttles and the boat slowed quickly to a stop.

"Now give her just enough forward throttle to hold her steady in place against the current. Do exactly as I say and you might live through this, Captain."

Terry did as he said. He wanted supper at home with the missus tonight and after that to hoist a few pints on the corner with his mates at the Bag of Nails. "If I go, I'm taking you with me, Sunni-Boy," he said.

He looked forward, scanning the bow, looking for Tim, his mate. That's when he saw the motionless body lying on the deck just aft of the midships hatch cover. Blood was pooling around his head. His mate was dead. The main hatch cover was now open and equipment was rapidly being handed up from below and mounted on the hatch cover. Looked like bloody pipes resting on a tripod, most of the stuff.

"Don't look like bloody musical instruments to me," he muttered.

"Mortars," Sunni said. "Russian Podnos 82mm mortars," he informed the captain in a very casual way. "Not cheap, either, but perfect for this kind of short-range attack. Each mortar throws a three-kilogram fragmentation bomb a thousand yards at twenty rounds a minute. Keep your eyes open and you'll see the effect."

When Terry cast his eyes to the right to see what the mortars were aimed at, he thought, Bloody hell. They were going to blow up Thames House. It was the headquarters of MI5. The very people who were charged with protecting us from these kinds of animals.

All six mortars started firing rapidly and simultaneously. Each was targeted at different areas of the building, and the immediate effect was catastrophic. Giant hunks of concrete and glass were blasted away, whole sections of wall and roof started collapsing, and fire broke out everywhere, flames licking out of windows. The death and injuries inside must be horrific, Terry thought.

But the tide turned quickly against the Sword of Allah. Thames House was not quite as helpless as it looked. Return fire suddenly erupted from the roof of the giant building. Even though his precious barge was being riddled with lead, Terry cheered loudly for the men behind the guns up there.

The weapons atop Thames House were M61 Vulcan 20mm Gatling guns. And they trained their deadly fire on the stationary barge. These modern versions of the old Gatling guns were in fact six-barreled rotary cannons, each capable of firing more than six thousand rounds per minute.

Pudge was being ripped to pieces. But so were all the terrorists behind the mortars on the main hatch cover. Their bodies were literally shredded right before Terry's eyes, and what was left of their corpses was blown backward over the gunwales and into the river.

There was no more glass in the wheelhouse, and Terry was very surprised he was still alive. Pudge had been built of heavy steel, including the wheelhouse, and the rounds were pinging off. Sunni shouted, "Get her out of this fire!" For some bizarre reason, Sunni believed he could still escape the murderous hail of lead from the Thames House rooftop.

"Full astern," Sunni screamed above the thunderous fusillade from M15. "Back her down beneath the bridge and stay there!"

Terry looked over his shoulder. Amazingly enough, people had just stopped their cars on the bridge and gotten out to have a look. Insanity begets insanity.

He shouted, "It is over, you rank-smelling little moron! You'll never escape now!"

"Not quite over, Captain. I have loaded three 200-pound nitrate-peroxide bombs in the hold. I'm now going to take out the Lambeth Bridge and everyone on it."

"Timed-fuse or detonator?" Terry asked, seemingly on autopilot, having watched far more than just a few episodes of Spooks on the telly. Some part of his brain knew that if the answer was "detonator," he was going to ignore the bloody pistol and rip the little bastard's head off, then toss his fuckin' detonator overboard.

"Detonator," Sunni said, and patted his shirt pocket. "Right here in my…shit! I gave it to Rashid in case…shit!" Rashid, as they both knew, no longer existed.

At that moment, two Tornado Air Defense F3 fighter jets screamed just overhead, not twenty feet above the Lambeth Bridge and Pudge. You could see the deadly air-to-surface missiles hung in the shadows beneath their wings.

The Tornados were aircraft from the "Protection Wing" squadron based at RAF Marham. Marham was just one of dozens of World War II RAF fighter bases scattered around London. In the air 24/7, these Air Defense fighter jets provided the capital with an almost instantaneous air-strike response to any attack on the city.