The van was painted in Harrods signature livery, a shade called 'Harrods Green,' a bespoke color that most closely resembled a metallic army green, and featured the familiar handwritten script, Harrods, in gold leaf on both sides and the rear.
Harrods, as it happened, was owned by the father of Dodi al Fayed, the Egyptian playboy who had courted and then died in a car crash in Paris with the Princess of Wales. In a famous trial, Mohamed al Fayed had publicly and vociferously blamed the death of his son and Diana on the Royal Family and MI6. He had lost.
That this particular van now stood waiting at the gates of the Royals' most sacrosanct of hideaways presented not a small bit of delicious irony for the always ironic Smith. The wolf, in sheep's clothing, was once more at the door.
Smith located the master control that opened the main gate. He hit the marked button and the big black gates swung open. The green van rolled inside the estate proper and the gates quickly closed behind it. Instead of proceeding along the main road to the castle, the driver veered off to the left, taking a narrow lane through the thick woods that came to an end at the Security HQ car park. There were a number of other vehicles, mostly open trucks with four-wheel drive for getting about the property in any weather.
Smith was outside waiting anxiously when the truck finally appeared out of the darkness and pulled into a spot next to a pair of mud-spattered Land Rover Defenders. He smiled at the sight of the satellite video dish now being raised atop the truck's roof. Inside the van were all the electronics necessary to broadcast live television throughout the U.K. from this remote location.
The driver's door swung open and out climbed his old friend from school days back home, a lanky chap dressed in a Harrods delivery uniform. His name was Hurri Singh. He'd been one of the most highly decorated heroes in the Pak Army, and one of the few men on earth he completely trusted. They embraced warmly, clapping each other on the back.
'No problems on the way up from London, I trust?' Smith said.
'None at all.'
The two walked to the rear of the van and Singh opened the padlocks that sealed the double doors. He swung them open to reveal thirty heavily armed men, ten in civilian clothes, ten in perfect copies of Balmoral security uniforms, and ten commandos in full camo. They were seated along benches opposite each other.
Their eyes were eager; they were aggressive young men recruited from the poorer, more radical Muslim neighborhoods of London, all screened for intelligence, courage, and religious fervor. Once identified, they'd then been sent to the mountains of northwest Pakistan. There, under the aegis of Sheik Abu al-Rashad, in a terror camp operated out of the bunker at Wazizabad, they'd been through six months of heavy military/terror training.
One of Abu al-Rashad's most trusted veteran commando officers, a graduate of Sandhurst, had supervised these U.K. fighters during the preparation for this Balmoral operation, going so far as to construct a mock-up of the castle's interiors. His name was Colonel Abu Zazi. The burly, bearded desert fighter climbed down out of the truck and embraced Smith.
It was Zazi who would lead the critical phase of the attack.
The storming of Balmoral Castle.
SIXTY-ONE
ALL THIRTY OF THE YOUNG HOMEGROWN U.K. terrorists gathered around Smith at the main control console, listening carefully to his every word. No one paid the slightest attention to the three bloodied corpses crumpled against the rear wall. Although the fighters were barely out of their teens, they were all about focus. Tonight would be the realization of all their months of training in the mountains of Pakistan. And, finally, vengeance for the deprivations and humiliations heaped upon their families since arriving in the United Kingdom decades earlier. Not to mention the daily murder of their brothers by invaders in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It had fallen to these boys, these angry children of Islam, to deliver a blow of unprecedented magnitude against the infidels and their supreme rulers.
Ten of the young fighters were dressed in photographically precise reproductions of the Balmoral Security Forces uniform, right down to the buttons. They would be first to take action and Smith addressed them as a group.
'As you well know, your first objective will be to neutralize the Balmoral security guards and the Raytheon PIDS surveillance system of electronic fencing and sensors. Ten Balmoral security guards are all currently at their posts throughout the forests surrounding the castle. Ten monitoring stations, each not much larger than a small garage, are all linked directly to this command center. At the Wazizabad camp, you were provided with maps of the Balmoral estate, indicating the location of each station and its designated number. They have the maps, Colonel Zazi?'
'Of course.'
'Good. When I give the order, you ten will proceed to your assigned stations in the vehicles outside, clear?'
'Clear, sir,' they all replied in their oddly unaccented English.
'Do not deviate from your assigned routes through the woods. Each station is equipped with TV monitors displaying live feeds from the many closed-circuit cameras in every guard's assigned sector. In addition, as you know, they constantly monitor the various hardwired sensors designed to alert them to any suspicious human presence on the grounds. Yes?'
They all nodded in unison.
'My old friend John over there on the floor is going to provide cover for your approach. John has a lovely family living right here on the estate, not five miles distant. So John is going to make an announcement to the on-duty security officers. When you arrive on station, you will look like an electrician and you'll be expected. In that satchel over there are dark green Balmoral electrical engineering jumpsuits and caps to be worn low over your faces.'
'One question,' Hurri said.
'Yes?'
'The glass in those forest stations? Bulletproof?'
'Good question. Should have been covered in training. Yes, it is. You will need to get the security officer inside to admit you. Big smile as you rap on the window. Remember, they are armed too. Anything else? No? Good. As soon as John's announcement is made, move out. John? We're ready for you now.'
Two of the young terrorists dragged the bound chief of security over to the console and placed him in a chair in front of a microphone. Then they removed his cuffs.
Smith sat on the edge of the console looking down at the chief of security, now in a state of shock.
'Do exactly as I say, John. Should you deviate from the script, I assure you, two of these men will go directly to your home and kill your entire family. The children first. You know that I will do it, don't you, John?'
He nodded, tears in his eyes, a broken man.
'First, John, I want you to shut off all the power to every single motion, heat, audio, and thermal sensor within the perimeter. Do it now.'
Like an automaton, John reached forward and pulled back on four bright red levers. All of the sensor readouts above were suddenly extinguished. 'Good. Now do exactly the same with all the security cameras. Power them all down.'
When that was done, Smith placed a handwritten script in front of the man and bent the microphone toward him.
'You're going to make this announcement. You're going to do it with a pistol at your head so you don't make any stupid mistakes. And you are going to sound as natural as possible under the circumstances. Let's do a rehearsal, shall we? Read it first without the live microphone.'
He got through it, with only a slight tremor in his voice. In his mind, he saw nothing but the faces of his beloved family.
'Good enough. Try to give it a more 'just a minor glitch, lads,' attitude this time, will you? Now we'll turn the mike on and do it for real.'
The man leaned into the microphone and spoke.
