CHAPTER FIVE
As De Falaise sat back in the seat, he'd pull down his sunglasses occasionally and glance in the wing mirror of the Bedford armoured truck. From this angle it was difficult to see the extent of the line, but he knew it stretched right back along the motorway, zigzagging its way around the stationary cars with skeletons at the wheels. From the air it would have looked like a convoy: one of the wagon trains from the Old West, or even an army during the crusades (as a student of history, these kinds of comparisons amused him). But instead of being on horseback or in wagons, his men were encased in Challenger 2 battle tanks, Warrior Mechanised Combat Vehicles, Hummer muscle jeeps, Land Rover Wolves, open top WIMIKs, and other Bedfords: some capable of carrying up to twenty troops. Keeping them all in line were motorbikes patrolling the length of the convoy, ridden by his trusted elite brought across the Channel with him.
Like Tanek, driving this truck. The olive-skinned man stared ahead at the road, changing gears every so often, but never taking his eyes off the route ahead. De Falaise admired his single-mindedness. It reminded him of his own. He recalled the first time he'd come across the soldier, in a small provincial town in Turkey. De Falaise had been engaged in a highly illegal gun-running operation when the virus struck, and was quite grateful that people began dropping like flies because he'd been well on his way to getting caught… or killed. He subsequently decided to make his way towards Istanbul, with a plan to somehow travel through Europe and get back home to France. The plan wasn't very clear in his mind, mainly because it was every man for himself in the region at that precise time. What money he had acquired from the deal meant nothing, and De Falaise was beginning to regret handing over the firearms he'd snuck across the borders of several countries. Bullets now seemed to be the only way to get anything, and the only way to stay alive.
He certainly hadn't expected to run into his soon-to-be second-in-command outside a small watering hole there. The bar had been quite full, some of the men inside immune to the disease that was sweeping its way across the world, some of them in the later stages of it and desperate to drink themselves to death. De Falaise had realised long ago that there was no point in attempting to outrun the virus, nor was there any point in trying to avoid the people who were coughing up blood everywhere. If it was his time, then so be it; he'd meet the Devil and shake his hand. Who knows, maybe he'd even get a line of congratulation or two for services rendered. As it turned out, De Falaise was one of those spared, so perhaps his 'good' work hadn't gone unnoticed after all. The Devil looks after his own, isn't that what they always said? If so, then he'd also looked after this hulking great brute of a man who'd been taking on all comers in that very bar.
Drawing nearer, the Frenchman watched, increasingly impressed, as the fighter picked up men and swung them over his head, using moves he'd never come across before to floor others (De Falaise had later found out this fighting style was called krav manga, a martial art taught by the Israeli army, which Tanek had adapted to suit his own purposes). Breaking one man's nose, driving his fist so hard into it that there was nothing left of the bridge, Tanek had incapacitated another by arcing his forearm and crushing the man's windpipe with a crack that made De Falaise wince. It was then that De Falaise spotted an attacker creeping up on Tanek, knife drawn and ready to spring. He shouted out to the big man to warn him, but Tanek was already pivoting – with a grace that belied his size – and was unslinging what looked like a rifle. It wasn't until the two bolts had been fired, striking the man squarely in the chest, that De Falaise recognised it as a crossbow; but no ordinary one (modified by Tanek himself based on ancient Chinese Chu-ko-nu repeater designs, able to fire from a magazine without the need for single bolt reloading). The rest of the men fled from the scene after that, leaving Tanek and De Falaise alone.
Tanek had raised the crossbow, inserting another magazine, and for a moment De Falaise thought he might shoot him too. But no. Tanek walked over, kicking fallen chairs and bodies aside, and stood before him. Then, in that hybrid Southern European-Middle Eastern accent of his barely anyone got to hear, Tanek thanked him for the warning.
Taking a couple of bottles of whiskey and two glasses from behind the now deserted bar, De Falaise and Tanek drank and talked, though the larger man would only disclose the least amount of information about himself that he could get away with, all in that monotone voice of his. Information like the fact that he'd once worked as a torturer and knew every single pressure point on the body, especially those that caused the maximum of pain. De Falaise, in turn, told Tanek why he was there, what he was doing, and what he was about to do next.
'I've been in this business for some time, mon ami, but have always had a craving to see the guns I sell put to better use. To build up an army of my own.' He recalled joyous times as a child, playing with toy soldiers – when he wasn't constructing gallows out of Meccano, much to his parents' dismay – sending his troops into 'battle', relishing the authority it gave him even at that young age. 'It strikes me that we can look upon this little… incident as either a setback or an opportunity,' De Falaise had said, knocking back a shot of the whisky. 'And I, for one, have always been an opportunist. There is much to gain from being organised where others are not, from being able to take advantage of a certain situation and use it fully. History teaches us that, if nothing else.' And to emphasise his point, he quoted the Carpetbaggers at the end of the American Civil War, who had come from the North, exploiting the South's weakened state to gain money and power. He laughed when he saw Tanek's eyes glazing over. 'I apologise. The subject has always fascinated me. History goes in cycles, that is what my old teacher once said. Now he was a dying breed of patriot.'
The more he talked, about moving up into Europe, about gathering a band of men as he went, about taking their fair share of the glory on offer, the more De Falaise convinced himself that night. Before, he hadn't really had much of a clue what to do, but now, as he explained the basics of his spur of the moment plan, the more it sounded like the one and only course of action.
There was scope here to take control fully. But where to start? Germany? Italy? Or – De Falaise's dream – his homeland of France? But, as they were to discover, it would not prove so easy to achieve. Others, just like De Falaise, had already had the same idea. They were professionals and they'd organised themselves more quickly than he'd had a chance to. It was true that he'd recruited his core group during this sweep of Europe – like Henrik the German with a passion for fine cigars, silver-haired Dutchman Reinhart, an expert marksman, the Lithuanian Rudakas, the broad Italian Savero, and Javier, originally of Mexican descent but now operating out of Spain, who in spite of his belly was a mean fighter. All were former mercenaries, their allegiance given to power and riches, rather than any flag. But together they hardly constituted the army De Falaise had envisaged. And though they'd been lucky in acquiring some weapons and transportation, the group finding bikes easier to manoeuvre in the heat of guerrilla warfare, they'd also been thrashed any number of times and been forced to retreat, losing many good foot soldiers in the process.
All of which meant that by the time De Falaise and his officers entered France, they were in no mood for the resistance they met there either. On the one hand, it made him proud that his people hadn't just rolled over and given in. But on the other, it meant that De Falaise would be denied the role of Governor here as well.
'Merde,' he'd muttered to himself as they were driven out of Paris by the most powerful gang in charge there. 'It was such a good plan, too.'
But there was still hope. Whispers reached them that across the sea, the once 'Great' Britain was but a shadow of its former self. And something about that definitely appealed to De Falaise, as it probably would have done to his old history teacher. Just like in 1066, when William the Conqueror's Norman army had landed at Pevensey beach and then defeated Harold at Hastings, De Falaise would claim the place as his own. William had quashed all the rebellions after he was crowned King, so why shouldn't he do the same? It was also the chance to put right a few wrongs. The outrages of the Hundred Years' War, for example, when repeated attempts to take over France had failed – and then, of course, there was Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. That still stung. The one-time Emperor's downfall after that had been swift and marked a turning point in the war between Britain and France that straddled the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries. A war which, at its heart, went back much further.
De Falaise had to know for sure, however, what condition the island was in. Which was why they'd made the effort of staking out the Channel Tunnel. Sooner or later, he realised, someone was bound to come through it from the other side and then… well, they'd get first hand information about the situation.
'Everything's gone to shit. It's chaos… Fucking chaos. Why do you think we came through the tunnel? It's like being back in the dark ages.'
How appropriate, thought De Falaise.
