The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Fourteen

London, England

“Sir, we have parachutists coming down in the park,” an army sergeant reported, running up to Monty and striking a salute. The panic was growing stronger by the moment. Half of the operating staff were on their feet, looking as if they expected the order to evacuate the building at any moment. Alex DeRiemer ran though the maps in his head and concluded that the Germans could be on them within moments… assuming that the War Office actually was the German target. “Captain Milligan is looking for orders, but the barracks have been hit!”

Monty took control of the situation decisively by firing a single shot into the ceiling. “We’re not in any danger,” he said as silence fell, and the staffers stared at him. “Sergeant, inform Captain Milligan that I want him to deploy his men to defend this building while we summon up what reinforcements we can from the outer barracks.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said, heading out the door at speed. The operators were slowly taking their places again, picking up telephones and continuing to try to issue orders, summoning the RAF back to London to defend it from the German parachute hordes.

Monty was thinking along the same lines. “They’re throwing away a unit of paras,” he said. “Why are they doing that?”

DeRiemer hesitated. “It has to be a strike intended to kill everyone who could issue orders to the armed forces,” he said, grimly. Monty looked up as a distant explosion made the bunker shake slightly, underscoring his words. “If they wipe out everyone in high command, who’s going to be able to get the word out to the troops?”

“This building will have to be defended, then,” Monty said. He picked up a phone, barked a series of orders into it, and then put it down again. “I’ve just passed on tactical command to the recovery site outside the city, somewhere that won’t be affected by the German bombings or the commandos they’ve dropped into London. Do you have a side-arm?”

“No, sir,” DeRiemer said, wondering just what Monty meant. He’d gone through firing courses as part of his work for MI6, but he couldn’t reasonably be called a soldier by anyone, unless the army was really desperate. He wiped his spectacles and peered at Monty; the old soldier looked as if he was weighing up the odds in his head. “What do you want me to do?”

“There’s two platoons of armed soldiers here,” Monty said, as he led DeRiemer out of the chamber and up the stairs to the main lobby. DeRiemer could hear the noise of firing growing louder and smell the haze from guns being fired in a confined space. “The Germans may know about the set-up here, but we kept the information on the duplicate set-up a secret, so they may want to take this place and kill us all. If that happens…”

He stopped as they reached a barricade; the sound of firing was growing louder. “Sergeant Yates,” Monty said, seeing one of the soldiers positioned to fire back at the enemy. “Report!”

Yates didn’t look at Monty; he kept his eyes on the door. “At least thirty men out there, sir,” he said, grimly. His voice was very dry; DeRiemer couldn’t understand how he remained so calm under the pressure of the attack. “They tried to rush us as soon as they got organised and we blew the shit out of them, killed at least ten of them and sent the others falling back. They got smarter and now they’re firing on us from all sides.”

Monty nodded. “And deployments?”

“Captain Benton has deployed one platoon here and one platoon to sniper positions,” Yates said, just before he fired a single shot out of the building. “Sir, I suggest that you keep your head down…”

A burst of machine gun fire from outside, blasting into the barricade and past it into the walls, underscored his words. “We had this entire building designed to be difficult to seize,” Monty said, his voice just as calm as the Sergeant’s voice. DeRiemer wouldn’t have been surprised to see him pull out a cigar and light it. “They might bomb us, but even then, we have the bunker.”

He glanced over at Yates. “Have the staff been evacuated?”

“Those who remained in the building, yes,” Yates said. He fired another shot as a German paratrooper showed himself for a second. “They’ve been moved down into the bunkers, sir; we don’t dare send them out to the streets with the Germans out there.”

“General,” a new voice said. DeRiemer liked Captain Benton on sight; he was short, brown-haired, and carrying enough weapons for three men. He passed an assault rifle to Monty and an older pistol to DeRiemer, who held it carefully, trying to remember how to use it. “I have an observer on the top of the building. He’s saying that Buckingham Palace and Downing Street are under attack and we’re just getting their remains.”

Monty frowned.

“We need this building held,” he said reaching for a telephone. It came off the wall in his hands; a stray bullet had smashed part of it, rendering it useless. “Have you sent a runner to the barracks?”

“I think they know that they’re under attack,” Benton said very dryly. Monty gave him a reproving look. “I’ve tried to send someone to warn them about the parachutists, but unless they come up here, we’re not going to be able to leave the building.”

“They can’t expect to remain in the centre of London forever,” DeRiemer said, feeling terror lurking at the back of his mind. Somehow, he had never even thought of the possibility of holding a normal conversation in the middle of a fire-fight; a noise from behind him made him duck instinctively, even as he realised that it was only Yates taking a pot-shot at a German soldier. “We have to catch them on the ground?”

Monty whirled around. “How the hell do they intend to escape?”

“I don’t know,” DeRiemer admitted.

“We have to remain here until we get reinforcements,” Benton said, before Monty could say anything. “Whatever the Germans are doing, we’re powerless to prevent it …”

Major David Simmons picked himself off the ground and barked orders, watching as armed soldiers ran around, trying to form up into units. The Germans had bombed the Albany Street Barracks - officially known as the Regent’s Park Barracks — with a precision he wouldn’t have believed possible; the flaming ruins had made it almost impossible to assemble the Royal Horse Guards in anything like their normal order. They’d been equipped to serve as a light infantry unit, but the alert hadn’t prevented them from continuing their ceremonial duties, something that might have saved hundreds of lives. The sergeants and military policemen were running around, trying to assemble the soldiers into composite units, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

“Sir,” a runner shouted, sweat pouring down his face. “There are parachutists landing in St James’s Park and they’re attacking the Palace.”

Simmons felt his blood run cold. There was a closer unit, at Hyde Park Barracks, but if they weren’t responding to the crisis, it could mean that the German bombers had successfully killed enough of the soldiers to shatter their unit integrity and prevent them from interfering with the German mission. They probably wanted to snatch the King and his family, maybe even flying them out with a light aircraft from the Palace’s grounds. It was his duty to ensure that failed. The idea of catching the King in the middle of a fire-fight chilled him, but they must respond to the Germans before they completed their mission and fled.

“All soldiers, form up on the armoured cars,” he commanded. It had been sheer luck that the small unit of armoured cars, used mainly for preventing or breaking up riots rather than fighting the enemy, hadn’t been destroyed. The system was damaged, but with clear orders, the soldiers began to return to normal, preparing for the unbelievable; an assault against their own government, or at least it’s buildings. There were hundreds of very important people trapped with the Germans, and somehow he suspected that the thousands of people fleeing the scene didn’t include the main targets. The Germans were good.

“Sir, they’re wearing British uniforms,” the runner said, his voice calmer now that he’d managed to catch his breath. Simmons swore under his breath; fighting at night was dangerous enough without the disadvantage of knowing that the enemy looked exactly like his own side. “The Palace needs your help.”

The column of soldiers moved out at once, spearheaded by the armoured cars as the soldiers advanced down towards Hyde Park and the Palace. The streets were emptying quickly as policemen, some of them looking to be on the verge of panic themselves, urged civilians to get out of the firing line. It had been years, as far as Simmons remembered, since anyone had practised an evacuation drill; London was paying now for that little oversight. Flames could be seen in the distance, some of them billowing up into the sky and daring the puny humans to put them out, others, nearer, were rising up from the direction of the barracks. Simmons detailed a runner to run to the barracks as the soldiers picked their way through Regent Street and down onto Pall Mall.

He toggled his radio and said a silent prayer under his breath. “This is Simmons,” he said, cursing the failure to set up a proper communications drill. The radio sparked and hissed at him, but he could hear voices, if very faint and barely heard. The Germans might be listening to the transmissions, but it was a risk they needed to take. “All active units, report in.”

He’d scattered some of his formed-up units around and listened as their senior officers replied. Some of them were being commanded by Sergeants, one of them by a Corporal, but they’d have to do. The responses came in just as a burst of firing came at them out of the darkness surrounding the Park; they’d bumped into the German defence line. The armoured car pushed forward, its machine guns splitting the night with lines of tracer fire. He saw, as something exploded, a group of men running towards Downing Street. One of them turned and lifted a weapon; he knew, then, that they were Germans. Their weapons looked nothing like the automatic weapons the British used…

They opened fire and the soldiers returned fire, cutting two of the Germans down before they reached cover and kept firing at the British line. They had a sniper up somewhere in one of the buildings; he hit two of Simmons’ men before one of the armoured cars swept the building with machine gun fire and killed the German. The entire battle was starting to turn into one of the counter-insurgency fights Simmons had seen in Northern Ireland; the thought gave him a moment of confidence. They’d won the few fights when the IRA came out to do battle in open fields — or, more often, in civilian areas with civilian lives caught in the middle. Simmons hoped that most of the civilians would be out of the area by now, but he’d heard that some SS units were fond of keeping civilians around to make life unpleasant for insurgents in Russia, and if they did that in the middle of London…

He ground his teeth as the soldiers slowly pushed their way into the park, cutting off one German unit from the other, assuming that they hadn’t abandoned one of their targets. The noise of gunfire was growing louder, most of it coming from the direction of Downing Street, so he assumed that the majority of the Germans were there. He didn’t relish a house-to-house fight through Downing Street, but if there was no other choice, he would have to deal with it. He detailed a unit to head towards Buckingham Palace when ten soldiers appeared out of nowhere; they didn’t know just how lucky they’d been not to get shot.

“Captain Pagan,” the leader said, saluting. His weapons were British, Simmons realised, and allowed himself to relax. “We managed to clear the bastards out of Buckingham Palace, but the King was wounded and the barracks have been effectively destroyed.”

Simmons nodded. The Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment was dedicated to preserving the lives of the Royal Family, whatever it took; they had headed directly to the Palace and counter-attacked the Germans. He hoped that one of them might be a senior officer, but instead, they were all junior to him.

“We’re going to have to dig the Germans out of the area,” he said, shortly. It was the only responsible decision he could have made. He’d already started deploying his men in position for the assault; once the experienced men were ready, they would advance and dig out the Germans. He wasn’t sure if he had the time to get all his ducks in a row, but in the absence of orders from higher up the chain, he intended to make sure it was all done properly. “Join your men to mine and prepare to advance.”

Skorzeny hadn’t been wasting his time; after the first organised counter-attack, he’d ordered his men to fall back in their units, leaving a trail of traps and mines behind them. The British had been hampered by his snipers, but now that they were organising their forces, they would be able to rapidly hunt down his remaining soldiers and kill or capture them all. The din of combat was coming closer and he knew that time was about to run out.

He’d deployed nearly two hundred men in the assault; a third of them were now dead or seriously injured, unable to escape. Two of his Strumscharfuhrers had been giving them what aid they could, but now their time was up and they held their silenced pistols to their heads. The injured soldiers couldn’t be taken with the commandos and they couldn’t even defend themselves; those who could still fire a weapon had been given the best positions Skorzeny could find and ordered to hold for as long as they could.

“Now,” he said, into his radio. A handful of German bombers had loitered overhead, without dropping their bombs, until he gave the order. Their bombs fell and struck at British positions, bombing at random to allow his men a chance to escape. All too aware, of the tightening noose, Skorzeny barked a command and the remaining uninjured commandos scattered, a handful following him and others spreading out across the city. Many of them would be caught, but those who survived would go to ground until the Panzers reached their hiding places.

More firing broke out behind him as the injured men died to defend their comrades’ backs. The British had probably sealed off the bridge, but they hadn’t been able to prevent Skorzeny and his men from getting down to the river and jumping into the river and swimming downstream. Each man had a small straw in his possession and used it to breath, remaining underwater until they had drifted well away from the firing, before sticking their heads out of the water and checking their location. Skorzeny ordered them all out of the water and they broke into a warehouse, using it as a place to dry their uniforms and dump most of their weapons. The handful they kept were British-issue; they’d recovered them from Atlee’s bunker.

“Good,” Skorzeny said. They all spoke perfect English; they should be mistaken for English soldiers, rather than German soldiers, if they were seen. Flames and smoke were still rising up over London as the commandos walked through the streets, ignoring the panic and the handful of other military officers they met, merely exchanging salutes and walking onwards. Skorzeny led them through streets he had memorised, hunting for a particular address; he finally found it in a well-kept little set of streets, where the British upper middle-class would live.

He glanced at his men for a long moment. He hadn’t had time to brief them on where they were going; technically, he shouldn’t have brought them at all, but they were going to be needed. Their target lived alone, well away from anyone who might have revealed his activities to the world; Skorzeny and his men would be able to secure him without much in the way of bother, provided that they were unnoticed. The British weren’t the Germans; according to his briefing, where a German household would be awed to see soldiers, the British would be more likely to call the police and make a complaint. If they did that and someone worked out that there shouldn’t have been an army unit there…

Skorzeny pushed his doubts aside and knocked on the door. There was a long pause before he finally heard the footsteps of a man walking towards the door. When it opened, the man’s eyes blinked at the sight of armed soldiers. Skorzeny didn’t give him time to react. He stepped forward, pushed the door wide open, and urged his men inside. Two of them went off to search the house, the other three remained, holding their contact in their hands. He wouldn’t be able to escape.

“Good morning, Mr Philby,” Skorzeny said, very calmly. Philby would know who he was. “I am Contact Zero.”

Philby’s eyes went very wide. A moment later, he fell to the ground in a faint.