The War of the Spooks - a story by Forcon & James G

Seven


Inspector John Cartwright was an old school copper. He’d been with the Met. Police for – as he oft liked to say to younger colleagues – since the Golden Age of Policing. Was there a golden age of policy? Cartwright liked to think there was. He was up for retirement soon, one of the many old guard soon to be gone from the very modern institution which the Met. was forever trying to mould itself into. Back in the good old days, when first in the Met., Cartwright had been a patrol bobby for a few years in West London before working Vice in Soho. That was his golden age. He’d done things then that were impossible now. The perks of the job had been bungs from pimps and freebies from prostitutes. That was Soho, that was the early Nineties. Cartwright caught which way the wind was blowing early on – the Macpherson Report changed more than just race relations – and cleaned up his act. His vices when working Vice were in the past. Married with children, Cartwright had stayed in the Met. and been clean when others had been booted out for being dirty. He’d not spent too long in Vice either, moving to Special Branch. From a lowly Detective Constable, he’d risen to the rank of Detective Sergeant and now Inspector. He had a knack for spotting human weaknesses, the vices that people had. This made him excel in Special Branch. As the Met. modernised for the challenges of the 21st Century, Special Branch eventually became part of the Counter Terrorism Command. Special Branch had always worked with the old Anti-Terrorist Branch but Cartwright had before then worked against domestic extremists and foreign spies: Special Branch had long been the arresting arm of MI-5. Cartwright had not become too long in the tooth to learn new tricks. Islamic nutcases it was now for Cartwright. Alas, he still had the experience when it came to counter espionage and the Counter Terrorism Command maintained those duties. The past decade had seen a refocus when it came to tracking foreign spies with veterans like Cartwright involved. It was the Russians again. No longer the Soviet KGB but instead the GRU & SVR. Russians were Russians to him. Of course, he’d been too young to ever be involved Special Branch activities during the Cold War but so many of the youngsters did think that he had: ‘Grandfather’ they called him and assumed that he had been. That he was though, a grandfather. He had two daughters with the eldest having given him a pair of grandsons. His youngest daughter was twenty-three and on her second marriage already. She was with a soldier now, a lieutenant with the Welsh Guards, and pregnant too. Cartwright didn’t know where his son-in-law was deployed to. He presumed the lad had been sent off Eastern Europe…not knowing that Lt. Linton was much closer to London than that. Regardless, worries about family aside, Cartwright had a job to do. There was a war on. He wasn’t carrying a gun but he was a participant in that conflict raging with a sideshow of that being the current War of the Spooks.

This brought about the detention this afternoon by officers under Cartwright’s command of the Member of Parliament for Haringey, Dennis Rutherford.


Rutherford wasn’t even on Cartwright’s radar. Counter Terrorism Command officers had been tasked to support the Security Service as they defended Britain. They were doing old Special Branch duties and Cartwright told his people they were Special Branch now for all intents and purposes. MI-5 had their eyes on a foreign journalist, a Ukrainian national. There’s got their information about him from somewhere that they didn’t reveal to Cartwright: he strongly suspected it came from one of the earlier arrested spies turning traitor. This guy was an SVR agent, Cartwright was told, and should be meeting a high-level contact. The identity of the contact was unknown. MI-5 shadow teams were in-close but they had Special Branch people nearby. When the time came to make an arrest, Cartwright’s people would be on-hand for that and related tasks. The Ukrainian wasn’t believed to pose a real physical danger yet Cartwright had received permission from his own higher-ups to have armed support. The Met. had mobile armed teams, authorised firearms officers who served either with anti-crime units or specialist anti-terror teams. The latter were very busy this Sunday evening so Cartwright had been given the support of one of the former. A trio of officers, a man and two women in a vehicle – driver, navigator and observer when on the road; all three with semi-automatic rifles when outside of their transport (back-up pistols too) –, were nearby here in the East London area of Bow where Cartwright’s people along with the spooks were all over the property where the Ukrainian was. Cartwright kept that team from SCO19 back and out of sight in their unmarked car. He hoped not to use them.

In close contact with the senior MI-5 man on-scene, Cartwright waited for the word to move in. The spooks wanted to arrest the Ukrainian along with his contact. They weren’t waiting for the second figure to show up and then conduct a wider surveillance op with him. This was the final stage of the pantomime that the Ukrainian was putting on as an innocent when in reality he worked for the SVR and was aiming to pass them top secret information he got from his contact. MI-5 wanted the contact caught red handed. Cartwright and his people, half a dozen of them (not including the standby armed team), waited impatiently for the go order. It came, eventually.

Go, go, go.

Bow was an area undergoing regeneration. It was near to the Olympic Stadium, where West Ham played and their scheduled game today called off due to the sudden outbreak of war. There were many flats in former townhouses as well as bedsits and family homes too. On a busy side street away from one of the main roads, the Met. Police went through a door. Cartwright didn’t bring the SCO19 team in though they stayed waiting close. No intelligence from his own people nor the Security Service spoke of an on-hand threat of the Ukrainian or his contact being armed. That could have been a very costly mistake but, thankfully, it wasn’t. In the flat, there were no weapons. Cartwright would later release the SCO19 team though only after they’d escorted those detained away from here and to New Scotland Yard… just in case there was someone who might want to liberate’ the prisoners taken en route.

Cartwright came into the flat just after the door was taken. He’d let the youngsters show off their stuff with getting in. They had two men in custody. In the living room, cuffed while forced to stay sitting down on the sofa, he recognised the first man from the intelligence briefings given by MI-5 and the second one from the news. There was no doubting that the contact with the Ukrainian was that MP Rutherford. The man was a national figure. Cartwright had many views of the man, none of which were flattering. To put it kindly, Rutherford was a massive sh*t. Here he was caught with a foreign spy. Shouty and self-important – as always –, Rutherford was demanding to be released. He told one of Cartwright’s young sergeants that she had no business asking him what he was doing here. He was a Member of Parliament and thus must be let go. Cartwright shook his head at his subordinate in response to this in case she lost her mind and started listening to this fool. The Ukrainian went out of the flat first and towards one of the waiting cars. Cartwright waited on removing Rutherford until the lead officer from the Security Service showed up. He came in, looked at who Special Branch had because his own eyes had to see this to believe what his ears had heard over the radio and told Cartwright to take him away with the Ukrainian. There’d be issues, yes, but he wasn’t going to be let go!


Back in Cartwright’s early days with Special Branch, those arrested in operations had been taken to Paddington Green Police Station. The custody suite there was the most secure in the country and designed to handle spies, terrorists and such like. Paddington Green had been shut a few years ago, sold off to developers with fancy apartments there now. A purpose-built replacement had been promised and, unsurprisingly, never constructed: politicians told lies. Cartwright had been briefed on Operation Castle Moat with relation to where parts of the Met. fitted into that in the days leading up to the Russians sending their tanks into some godforsaken places in Eastern Europe. He’d been told then that there were facilities being cleared at HMP Belmarsh in Southeast London for detention purposes (that prison often housed arrested terrorists) while the Met.’s headquarters itself would be used for interrogation. New Scotland Yard was behind Whitehall, on Victoria Embankment with the Ministry of Defence next door. To Cartwright, it would have been proper to call the place New Old New Scotland Yard: the current building had once been New Scotland Yard before there had been a move to Broadway followed in recent years a return here. It was madness all that location changing. The current building had seen refurbishment when the Met.’s headquarters returned which included custody and interrogation areas below ground. Cartwright had always preferred Paddington Green for those but this would have to do. Newer wasn’t always better, especially to a grizzly old warhorse like him.

They put the pair of detainees in separate interview rooms. It had been here yesterday where the two arrested yesterday in a similar operation had been taken. Cartwright had been back in his old Soho stomping ground – it still had the low-lives though he hadn’t been bothering them – and had been with the same lead MI-5 officer, this Winters chap, as well as another SCO19 armed team for that mission of nabbing a spy and a traitor. History was repeating itself today. The pair form Soho were now in Belmarsh, where he expected to see these two go… well, he hoped so anyway. The Ukrainian was certainly off there, that being if he really was Ukrainian. The journalist, Cartwright had been told, could possibly have been a Russian. If he was, a military base probably awaited him should that be confirmed. Anyway, the Ukrainian wasn’t his concern. Rutherford was.

Winters had gone from the flat in Bow to Thames House to see his Security Service superiours. There was a woman running things (times kept on changing) when it came to these matters. Cartwright imagined things would have to go higher, up to the political level. An MP being caught with a spy was something that politicians would make the decisions upon. Cartwright had his eyes on the man for the time being. The interview room was full of one-way mirrors. Rutherford sat on a chair on one side of a desk all alone in there. He couldn’t see Cartwright but unless he was daft, with Cartwright knowing he was a lot of things but not that, he had to know that he was being watched. It wasn’t just Cartwright watching him too. Chief Inspectors, Superintendents and even a Deputy Assistant Commissioner had come down to give him a look. Cartwright thought that that was all unnecessary, unprofessional even. The Met.’s senior people had a lot going on. Last night, less than twenty-four hours after the war with Russia started, there had been rioting in many parts of London. It was worse than 2011. Everyone had been called in and the streets had been flooded with coppers. The Commissioner and the Mayor had each come close to asking for military assistance but not done so in the end. It wasn’t a situation for soldiers. Gangs of youths had taken the opportunity to loot and burn parts of the city with the belief that the distraction of the war would allow them to do this unhindered. It wouldn’t be fair to say that the Met. was unprepared but neither were they in a proper position to stop what happened. What real use would soldiers have been though? Part of Cartwright relished the idea of the British Army making example of the worst of them but the sensible side of him knew that that wasn’t something that would turn out good in the end. It was raining today and was apparently going to rain all night too. That more than anything, even soldiers, was something that he knew would keep the rioters at home.

Back to Rutherford… This bloody man! Cartwright had long despised him. He’d been in politics for years, for as long as Cartwright could remember paying attention to politics. The man had come to real prominence in the past dozen or so years. He’d been a backbench non-entity with the then governing party before raising a stink over foreign wars. Booted out, he’d started his own political party. He’d won a parliamentary seat, lost it, formed another party and won another seat. He was an old-fashioned self-styled anti-Imperialist. If there was an unpopular cause which he could turn to his advantage, Rutherford made use of that. There were certain people whose imagination he captured with his particular brand of politics. He showed up in the media at every opportunity, making outrageous statements which Cartwright was sure were designed just to annoy ordinary and decent people. Russia was a cause for Rutherford. Poor old Russia: bullied and threatened by evil Britain. That was what Rutherford would have people believe. As far as Cartwright knew, there hadn’t been a suspicion within the Met. nor the Security Service that when it came to a showdown between Russia and Britain, Rutherford would be involved somehow acting against his country in any meaningful manner. It was anticipated that he would make trouble in the media… but for him to show up at a raided property where an SVR spy was found was something unexpected. Cartwright believed that soon enough there would be those who said ‘I told you so’ but, strangely, they wouldn’t have said that beforehand.


The spook Winters came back. He was with the Assistant Commissioner who led Specialist Operations, one of the highest posts in the Met. just below the Commissioner and his Deputy. Cartwright took his eyes off Rutherford and towards these two men, especially his senior officer. Other officers from the Security Service would be taking Rutherford into their care, out of here too and to another MI-5 location which Cartwright didn’t believe would be their Thames House headquarters. The Ukrainian was to stay here and would be interrogated. When the two of them were caught, they were making an exchange of information. A flash drive had been discovered and was in the process of being worked on to break its security coding. It seemed certain that it was being passed from Rutherford to the Ukrainian though the possibility had to remain open that it could have been going in the other direction. To know more was what Cartwright was to help find out. One of the ways that could be achieved was to uncover Rutherford’s movements before he turned up at that flat in Bow. He’d been seen going in though without it being known then who he was. Now identified, and his improvised disguise seen, his movements could be uncovered. Breadcrumbs would be followed, there would be a walking back of the cat. London was full of security cameras: it was the CCTV capital of the world. Tracking where Rutherford had been and what he had been doing, including who he had been with too, would start with that.

Cartwright began with the transport links in Bow. There was an Underground station and one for the Docklands Light Railway too. London’s public transport service was still running when Cartwright had thought that with the advent of war, it might be shut down. It wasn’t and he hoped that no one had made a colossal error of judgement there. Should the Russians use one of their lone wolf terrorist sleepers to hit that, say at rush hour tomorrow morning… yeah, that could be very bad news. He and his team, using computer assistance with the latest facial recognition technology, would quickly find Rutherford half an hour before that raid where he was at the DLR’s Bow Church Station. Backwards they went, tracking his journey. This didn’t take long. It led them south of the river and into Greenwich. There was a location there which was flagged up already as somewhere of interest in a previous counter espionage operation conducted several years ago. Cartwright found out that that investigation had led nowhere. Well… someone had messed up there. He brought his findings to the Security Service with those going upwards to Winters’ boss Hargreaves before word came back down to move on this. By tomorrow morning, Cartwright’s Special Branch people, SCO19 armed officers and MI-5 would be making a trip to Greenwich.

They f*cked up there: MI-5 and the Security Minister. They told the War Cabinet that they had the Whitehall security situation in hand... before a Spetsnaz team comes in shooting. The matter of Hargreaves' career prospects are a moot point now but Young will be in the sticky stuff.

Someone's perfect political career is over.

Nine


Lieutenant Commander Meredith Wardley had been told that she would never make it in the Royal Navy. That had been said several times to her. Who was it who told her that the first time? That had been her father. She’d sure shown him. Meredith was on a career track to take her higher, all the way to the top. Admiral Wardley sounded good, didn’t it? Her thoughts on the past and future both were cut off by the blast of a ship’s horn. The MV Bone was up right ahead, a big vessel coming in towards the Port of Felixstowe. It found two boats barring the way ahead. Meredith was on the smaller one of them, the patrol boat HMS Trumpeter, with the Border Force cutter HMC Vigilant was close-in. If that ship flying the Algerian flag chose to run them down, which it easily could… well, it would be a long swim from Meredith! It wasn’t going to though. Already going slow, the speed decreased. The horn was blasted again. Up high, the captain of the freighter was trying to alert them that he and his ship was here: just in case those on the two small boats didn’t see the Bone. They did and those on the larger ship saw them. All attention from the latter was directed here: no one was looking elsewhere. A third blast of the horn was made, drowning out all other noise.

“Keep looking at me, luv!” Meredith gave the bridge crew a wave. She was out on the Trumpeter’s foredeck, just in front of the superstructure. She was sure that the captain could see her. He’d be looking at her uniform yet also her blonde hair being blown about in the wind. Hopefully, all of those on deck would be doing the same.

“Good day to you!” She shouted again. There would be no chance of them hearing her, not when, for now the fourth time, the horn was used. The Bone was almost at a full stop now. Quieter now, almost afraid that those up there would here, Meredith spoke again: “Don’t look behind you, will you?”

She saw what hopefully no one on the ship did. A pair of black helicopters were coming in from the rear. Meredith had been told that they had silenced engines and would have flown here very high before dropping down out of the clouds suddenly. Brave pilots, whoever they were, and certainly not silly like her in standing on a tiny boat in front of a big ship! She lost sight of the helicopters. There’d been men abseiling down from them because the Bone didn’t have a heli-deck fitted. Meredith had been told that they’d been all in black, balaclava-clad and heavily armed. Apparently, they’d take control of the ship in just a few minutes.

That was underway now. She gave the bridge crew another big wave. “I’m coming up in a few, luvvies: wait for me!”


The Trumpeter had pulled alongside the stopped Bone. A woman she was, but Meredith was a sailor first. She went up onto the freighter without the offered hand from some fool trying to be gallant. Meeting the SAS second-in-command, Meredith asked him if all had gone well. It had, he told her: everyone had gone to plan. The ship was in their hands. He took her to where 19 Troop’s commanding officer could be found. She’d briefed Captain Collins before that British Army officer made the assault. He’d said that he would be ‘doing the job on the Bone’ – an odd turn of phrase – different from how the SBS would do it only with technical changes. Taking a ship via helicopter assault was something that both special forces units practised and had a common way of going about it. He didn’t know why that SBS wasn’t here – needed somewhere else they must be – but Collins had assured her that that his men could do the job.

They had.

Meredith met him up in the ship’s superstructure, in the wardroom for the Bone’s officers. “Someone was killed in here, Ma’am.” Such was his greeting.

“Okay…” She couldn’t see any sign of that.

“There’s traces of blood if you look hard enough. A lot of bleach has been recently used too: maybe a couple of people died here.”

Giving him a nod of acknowledgement where she took his word for it with something that she couldn’t see, Meredith followed Collins when he took her down to the crew’s private quarters. They had a recreation room there – the crew would spend a long time at sea, keeping them from boredom when not working was what this was for – and everyone found aboard was in there… unless they were dead that was.

She looked over the prisoners. Several of them were bruised and bloody. Others had their heads held high, looking defiant. They could strike that pose all they wanted: they’d just had their behinds kicked. “How many have you got, Captain?”

“Sixteen here. They’ll all live. There’s three of them dead elsewhere. They fought with their hands and anything they could grab.”

“No weapons?”

“They didn’t have time. They had them hidden away, ready for the ship to be inspected. We caught two of them damn close to getting their hands on several but my guys got to them first.”

Meredith noted how pleased he looked. He’d said that would be the case. Ambush the Bone at sea and the crew would have weapons ready: catch them a few minutes from docking where they were concerned about an inspection and they’d hide away their weapons.

“Let’s get this ship landed then.” Collins nodded at her when she said this. “We’ll take them off, get them ready to have a talk to and take this ship apart.”

More nods from the SAS man. “We’ll keep these chaps where they are for now, Ma’am, and then get them off ready for your people.”


The Bone was taken into Felixstowe. The freighter was brought in by a harbour pilot who’d come to her aboard the Trumpeter with Meredith as well as a scratch crew off the Vigilant just to get her in: the helicopters had been for the SAS only. The Port of Felixstowe was well known to those who landed her. Soon enough, Meredith was on the quayside watching the SAS take off the prisoners. She followed them.

While a serving Royal Navy officer, Meredith was on temporary duty to Defence Intelligence (DI). DI – once known as the Defence Intelligence Staff – was a military organisation with civilian personnel joined by those in uniform seconded there. To rise as high in the Royal Navy as she wished to, Meredith needed to do her duty here and do it well. There was a wartime DI facility up and running at Felixstowe. ‘Facility’ was an overblown term though. It was trucks and trailers in a car park secured by temporary fencing. There were Royal Military Police here joined with officers from the Port of Felixstowe’s own civilian force. Those from the ship were taken there. Meredith had left the search operation aboard the Bone to a couple of her subordinates. He’d report in soon enough with what she was sure would be some interesting finds aboard. The prisoners which the SAS had grabbed were her interest. Off Collins and his men were going though, before then he went, he took her aside.

“Ma’am, there’s something you should know.”

“Okay…” She thought it was something about these captives or the mission but Collins looked rather upset. This hard man with his hard demeanour had that shattered. What was the issue?

“You were at Credenhill last week, yes?” He didn’t wait for an answer to that. “That spook Rhiannon got killed yesterday in Whitehall.”

“Hargreaves?” Meredith recalled the woman from MI-5. The impression made upon him had clearly been more than it had been upon her. Meredith would deny it if anyone called her a cold fish yet she wasn’t one to wear her emotions on her sleeve. That death was a sad thing, yes. However, worse things had happened in the past few days: there was a global war on.

A sad nod and a grimace from him. “I’d rather doubt these guys had anything to do with it… but… they’re Russians. Their buddies got her.”

“I understand.” She did. Collins wanted her not to go easy on any of them. She had no intention of doing so anyway.

With the SAS gone, Meredith and her people here on land started sorting through the prisoners taken. There were I.D. documents to look through which each gave a false name and nationality for these supposedly innocent sailors. She would start the interrogations with the one which the SAS had said had really been in-charge: the second mate, not the apparent captain.


After a few hours, Meredith and her people took a break. They’d had opening conversations with each captive. A few of them had a story of innocence: others read off name, rank and serial number while talking about their rights as prisoners of war. However, a few more had been more talkative. She went and spoke with her people on the Bone. They’d found a mini-sub. It was among a whole swath of material of interest found within that freighter. Among the captives she had here were a pair of men she’d already tagged as those likely to have been swimming recently. Meredith had to consider that, knowing which waters the Bone had been in through the past few days, those were the surviving commandos who’d hit that American airbase in Suffolk in the war’s opening minutes. A massive hunt for them had been going on for many days now, one which now looked like it had come to a conclusion now. Why on earth they’d used a mini-sub to come back onboard before it went into port – why not get on the ship then? – was sure to be something soon to be found out when everything was got to the bottom of.

From the few prisoners who did talk (they weren’t all battle hardened: the strong, silent & stoic type expected), information as gained here with the interrogations. Things would go easier for them than those who didn’t. MI-5 officers were here now, many of them Meredith knew were cut up that their organisation had recently lost plenty of people. They weren’t keeping things as professional as the majority of those in uniform like her were (Collins excluded). She herself didn’t see this as personal. These guys were the enemy but that was it. Treat them rough, yes, because they’d been fighting this war disguised as civilian innocents, but there was no need to go medieval on them!

The day went on. Some prisoners were taken away. More of the inners of the Bone were torn apart to reveal more secrets. Meredith had been told earlier that the information about this ship at first came from a raid on a Russian diplomatic facility – where and when she didn’t know; she didn’t make the link with Collins’ SAS men – and these were GRU spooks and commandos she had. It seemed that the spies were more talkative than the Spetsnaz were. Odd that was, she found, but she ran with what she available. Meredith was on her guard against trickery yet knew that even within lies, there would be truth to ease out. The spooks who turned up would have clever ways of getting at that too.

When evening arrived, Meredith was back down at the quayside. Trumpeter was gone now, off patrolling the East Anglia coast. That Border Force cutter was still there. It was a nice ship. The Vigilant needed a gun to make it a warship – that water gun on the foredeck didn’t count as a weapon – but Meredith imagined commanding it if it was. Her wandering thought were once again today cut off.

“Commander?” It was the captain (or whatever rank he had: she’d forgotten) of the Vigilant.

“Yes?” He was a man who looked an awful lot like her father. Without realising, her mood towards him hardened at the mental comparison.

“Is it true about the Baltic’s?”

Meredith had no idea what he meant. She shrugged her shoulders. “Enlighten me?” Cold with her response she knew she was… but, c’mon! What else could she say to someone who was so much like her forever unloving dad who was speaking in riddles.

“I heard that we’ve lost in Estonia and those other places there.” He said it like he believed it, not like he was asking her about it. “They say Russia’s claiming victory. They say too that us and the Yanks have lost our army out there. Is it true?”

Meredith shook her head. “Nope,” she wasn’t having any of that, “that’s a lot of rubbish. I’ve heard some baloney today, believe me, but that isn’t true.”

Off the man went, back to his boat.

Meredith shook her head: some people will believe anything! As if NATO could lose a war.

Ten

Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Flint, Royal Corps of Signals, as enjoying a moment of well-needed rest. For the past ten days of war, his life had been a melee of chaos and exhaustion. As Britain had faced attacks from the air, the sea, from within her own borders and indeed from cyberspace, Flint had been on the frontlines of that latter type of warfare. Sleep had eluded him, with his duties only granting the Royal Signals officer, who was currently stationed at the Government Communications Headquarters or GCHQ at Cheltenham, an hour or two of rest at a time. That rest was spent passed out on the floor beneath a blanket brought in for him by one of the civilian GCHQ employees who lived nearby. Although he was relatively safe here at Cheltenham, his job was almost as stressful as his last tour in Afghanistan.

The responsibility resting on his shoulders was far greater. The safety of the whole nation was in Flint's hands. Over the past week, Britain had faced a multitude of cyber-attacks, directed against both civilian and military infrastructure. The true extent of the damage had yet to be revealed to the public with the Emergency Powers Act being used to prevent newspapers from reporting in it.

In the initial hours of the war, news organisations had in fact been victims of cyber-attacks, with many of their websites brought down, meaning that fake news being spread online by GRU bots could not be contradicted by the mainstream media. Panic and rumour-spreading had been the inevitable result, with rioting in London and other major cities both in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe. Social media had seen rumours of everything from nuclear war to Russian paratroopers landing in London to an man-made tidal wave approaching the East Coast!

With hindsight most of the rumours were ridiculous, but despite the efforts of Flint and his comrades, countless people had bought into the panic and either fled from their homes or taken to the streets in search of resources to loot - many of those resources being television sets and high-end clothing rather than tinned food or bottled water. It was pure chaos. The successful cyber-attacks on the power grid had only worsened the situation and although the blackouts were short-lived, panic and confusion was rife. In conjunction with actions by traitors, enemy commandos, and bombers and submarines launching cruise missiles, the effect had come dangerously close to a breakdown of civil order.

The Army Reserve - formerly known as the Territorial Army - along with regular military units were providing support to the police in securing critical locations; GCHQ was one such location, with a whole company of reservists from 3rd Battalion, Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment providing security for the facility. No commando raids had been attempted at Cheltenham, likely owing to the sheer number of soldiers and policemen stationed outside, but there was still anxiety particularly amongst the civilian employees that such a thing would occur at any moment. Lieutenant-Colonel Flint new better, and he was one of the few people in the British Army to have such knowledge. Early this morning, conformation had been received that NATO forces in the Baltic States had suffered a series of devastating military defeats, with large numbers of troops either encircled or having already surrendered.

Flint's niece, a lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps assigned to 5 Rifles in Estonia, was now likely amongst those awaiting their fates in Russian POW cages after the battalion commander, encircled and in a hopeless position, had ordered that 5 Rifles' colours be burned and radios be destroyed before seeking terms from the Russians.

Though it had yet to be announced, Flint knew the end was nigh. Britain would accept Russian terms and so too would the rest of Europe.

The Americans had lost three of their brigade combat teams in action in Eastern Europe, but they still had an army left, one that had not seen the majority of its forces destroyed in a futile defensive effort, but the European powers were down to almost nothing. Europe would accept Russian terms and the Americans would withdraw and cut their losses. The decision had already been taken in Whitehall after Berlin, Copenhagen, Rome, Paris, and finally Warsaw had agreed to a ceasefire. Casualties were extremely heavy already and the rioting on Britain’s streets had apparently reached unsustainable levels.

Air attacks against British infrastructure, while somewhat less destructive than expected, were taking their toll as well. People were frightened and demoralised, with that turning into anger as the war raged on.

The first families had been informed that their loved ones had died in action and the wounded were arriving back in the UK, many of them missing limbs or with terrible injuries – often burns or horrific, gaping flesh wounds. Many MPs were clamouring for peace – though the two major party leaders were united behind NATO’s war efforts, a rebellion in parliament amongst the hard left in the opposition had seen a briefly unified chamber descend again into disarray. Meanwhile the far right argued that Britain’s sons and daughters shouldn’t be dying for ‘faraway countries of which we know nothing about’ – that sounded appeasement to a career soldier such as Flint, but to many it was gospel. In any case, the powers that be had decided that a continuation of hostilities was not practicable. Instead, the Allied would back down and allow at least a part of the Baltic States and perhaps far more territory than that to be absorbed into a fledgling Russian Empire.

It was to be announced on the news shortly. Flint had been strictly instructed not to reveal what he knew to anybody until the government formally announced its decision. And so he waited. And waited, until the news became official. It would of course be devastating to lose a war like this, but Flint revelled in the knowledge that the deaths would soon end. But then, another thought struck him; what about those in the Baltic States who were now likely condemned to live under the heel of the jackboot? There would be many more deaths to come, he realised, regardless of the victors. Images he had seen of Grozny as a young officer attached to Defence Intelligence filled Flint's mind.

The End.

Wow- well done and stunning!

Russian 4GW seems to have triumphed.