Christopher Nuttall - The Fall of Night

“Yes, sir,” Ustinov said. Again, he couldn’t share details; men who shared information knew that sooner or later, accidentally or otherwise, they would be betrayed. They had, as it happened, found the perfect place for their actions. The only real danger was running into another team with similar ideas. “We also have the equipment that we need.”

“Good,” Control said. He leaned forwards. “Are you sure that you can carry out the mission without problems?”

Ustinov nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. There were questions he wanted to ask and didn’t dare. “Once we carry out the mission, we should be able to escape without serious problems.”

“We need you to continue attacks,” Control said. Ustinov nodded slowly; he had expected that much. “There is a mighty storm coming and we will need all the help that you can muster to make certain that we win. I won’t give you a list of secondary targets, some of which may be hit by other teams” — both men drew in their breath at the vague confirmation that there were other teams — “but you are ordered to hit as many targets as you can with the aim of causing disruption and chaos in the streets. Keep watching your email; we’ll send you a message if we want you to end the attacks and come out.”

Ustinov scowled. He would have been much happier only using email, but the Americans had refined their techniques for tracking and decrypting emails, and while the Americans and the Europeans seemed to be permanently divorced these days, it was folly to assume that the Americans wouldn’t tip off the Europeans if they knew that there was something big going down. Pre-planned messages had their uses, but there were only a limited number of possible messages that they could agree upon… and one certainty of the universe, as far as Ustinov knew, was that anything they planned for wouldn’t happen as they planned it. Friction was worked into every good plan, but the smaller the plan, the more chance for friction to terminate operations with extreme prejudice.

On the plus side, at least they’d be choosing their own targets.

Control stood up. “There will be no further contact,” he said, tapping a small case in the centre of the room with his shoe. “You have some details in there of other arms caches, but there were obvious limits as to what we could emplace in the city; the British are rather paranoid after Glasgow and Blackburn. You both know where to find some specific stocks that you can use for terror if you need them, so… all I can really say is good luck, and I’ll see you again in Moscow.”

Ossetia looked up at him. There was almost a nervous tone in his voice; anticipation mixed with concern about how he would perform when it all went into action. Ustinov knew the feeling; he had had it himself on his first mission in Chechnya.

“Something really big is about to happen, isn’t it?”

Ustinov smiled inwardly. “Yes,” Control said flatly. Ustinov wondered just how much control knew about what was coming; it didn’t seem likely that he would know everything, but at the same time, he wouldn’t be completely in the dark. “Your task is to sow random terror.”

Until we are either killed or run out of weapons , Ustinov thought. He knew better than to assume that the British police would just let them get on with it. The British SAS were almost as good as the Spetsnaz… and Ustinov knew that neither of them were trained to the peak of Spetsnaz perfection. Their skills lay in infiltration, not commando shootouts in the middle of schools and government buildings. He would have been delighted to have had some Spetsnaz helping out, but few of them could pass for harmless foreign slaves or stupid British people. It was up to them, he reflected; this could get very interesting; nasty, brutish and short .

“Good luck,” Control said shortly, assuming the face of the capitalist exploiter again. The Russian immigrants were exploited, Ustinov had found; both of them had been worked to the bone more than once, just because their position was so precarious. He had studied British politics enough to be certain that the ruling party was going to lose the next general election, putting in a Conservative Government with a mandate to, among other things, evict all immigrants. Or, perhaps, they would just move right to the British National Front; the European laws against hate speech hadn’t managed to put the BNP out of business… and they had even some MPs in Parliament. “I’ll see you again in Moscow.”

He strode out of the building, looking to all the world as if he had just given two downtrodden lackeys their orders. Ustinov checked the building quickly, then transferred the contents of the case into their own bags; money and some documents. The documents would be memorised at night, and then shredded; both men had near-perfect memories. There was a great deal of work to do in the building, mainly the plumbing; neither of them complained as they got to work. They needed to work to prove they’d earned their money legitimately.

Ossetia coughed. “Lunch at Euro-Burger?”

Ustinov smiled. Euro-Burger had been set up in direct competition to McDonalds and had been winning the struggle for dominance. He didn’t really understand it; both of them tasted like crap. They had moved some of their operations into Russia, where they were ruining the taste buds of countless Russian youngsters; Ustinov would have quite happily bombed either of them if he had thought that it would have managed to achieve something. It wouldn’t; they would need a bigger target to really shock the British public.

An aircraft flew high overhead.

He shuddered. He knew what it portended.

London, United Kingdom

“Your papers, please, General,” the guard said. His weapon wasn’t — quite — pointed at Langford’s chest. “I must insist.”

Major-General Charles Langford passed over his identification and waited patiently for the guard to complete a biometric scan of his body, comparing it to the details stored in both the ID card and the PJHQ computers. The tiny microchip in the card was supposed to be impossible to fake or alter, but Langford knew better than to assume that anything was impossible. It was why there were armed guards emplaced around the PJHQ — the Permanent Joint Headquarters — and why there was an entire company of armed soldiers stationed within the surrounding buildings. The last terrorist attack on the United Kingdom had been years ago, but it was only a matter of time.

“You may pass, sir,” the guard said. His partner saluted; the guard himself didn’t. Saluting on duty was a punishable offence; it could distract a guard from his duties. Langford would have understood the guard’s nervousness about not showing a superior officer respect — he had been written up for once saluting a superior in a combat zone — but there was no helping it. Security came first.

“Thank you,” Langford said, as the gate opened. It had been designed to prevent a truck bomber or something similar from entering the parking lot, but it all seemed absurdly flimsy compared to the Green Zone in Baghdad, even though the Americans there had known that they were likely to be attacked at any moment. The government of Britain hadn’t wanted to invest in much in the way of security, let alone the forced buy-outs of the property surrounding the PJHQ, but almost every security officer had threatened to resign and go public unless the government agreed. Security came first and, despite the Liberal Government, there were still people who wanted to keep the country safe.