UNIT UK: Looters, Freebooters & Dinosaurshooters

by ComsatAngel

UNIT, and Lt. John Walmsley, attempt to cope with the evacuation of London, gangs of looters and dinosaurs. The best and worst of human nature comes to light. 3rd Doctor.

Looters, Freebooters and Dinosaur-shooters

UNIT UK 13

The biggest British operation that UNIT got involved with, in plain view, without any deniability, involving the evacuation of London, began with very small beer. I think I'd alluded to it earlier when explaining to Sarah Jane Smith why journalists at UNIT's Aylesbury HQ were a Big Bad Thing. Plus, I got "Involved" with a married woman. And I killed a man. I also killed a theropod, but the man loomed larger.

Did I say "very small beer"? Appropriate analogy, considering how the Brig reacted at first. I was doing stag in the Guard Room, due to shortage of staff, when a call came in on the Kensington Office phone.

Kensington Office is an anonymous high-rise in that locale of London, near Holland Park, which houses UNIT admin staff, people who didn't pass our selection course, the Prospective Candidate Assessment with high enough ratings. I had used the underground car park there a few times – guaranteed free parking in central London is not to be sniffed at. The actual offices were virgin territory to me, not wishing to nosey around a collection of officers in offices pushing paper.

'We can see T-Rex! T-Rex!' yelled the person at the other end. 'Right outside the offices! T-Rex in the street! Tell the Brigadier!' they continued, yelling on a crackly connection.

'I certainly will,' I replied, coldly, putting the phone down, then ringing the Brig.

'Sir, Duty Officer in the Guard Room here. You may want to send a team over to Kensington Office, I think they've been drinking.'

'What!' barked the Brig down the phone. You could hear his moustaches twitching with annoyance. 'Explain yourself!'

'They just rang up to say there's a pop group doing a concert outside the office, sir. Very excitable. And they asked me to inform you.'

Silence from the other end. I'm not surprised; hearing your staff blathering utter nonsense for no reason isn't what you want to hear.

'A pop group, Walmsley? A pop group?'

'Yes sir, one called "T Rex". They infest the airwaves and Top of the Pops. You'd have a hard time missing them at present.'

A touch of distaste must have crept into my voice. I hate pop music. I'm not discriminatory about it, I hate all music – completely tone-deaf, me.

'Thank you, Lieutenant,' said the Brig, in icy tones, and put the phone down. Oh my,

Kensington were going to get it in the neck!

I shouldn't have gloated, because a minute later the Brig was down in person to see me.

'Kensington swear blind they haven't been drinking, Lieutenant. And it wasn't a free concert in the street by "T Rex" they were ringing about.'

He paused to collect himself.

'When Sergeant Hinde rang he meant they'd seen a T Rex.' I must have looked suitably dim at that. 'A Tyrannosaurus Rex, John. A damn great dinosaur!'

'They lied about not drinking, then, sir. Or they've been taking powerful drugs.'

He smacked his swagger stick into his palm.

'Hardly credible, is it? Still, not the sort of thing you'd make up. Rustle up a couple of the guard detail, will you?'

Predictably, being the bearer of bad tidings, I got sent with the squaddies to Kensington.

After getting there, I told Privates Crooke and Roker to wait with the lannie, whilst I checked in the Kensington Office. Not much traffic in Kensington Road, and no sign of dinosaurs.

The police were present in numbers already, and I got curious looks whilst crossing to the UNIT building. I was still in dress uniform so their alarm was only muted, not obvious.

'Lieutenant Walmsley. The Brigadier ordered me over,' I told the clerk sitting in the Reception booth. Make that the "white-faced" clerk.

Sergeant Hinde and two female clerks were sitting, also white-faced, in the staff room. The Sergeant had a cup of tea, which rattled on it's saucer.

'Lethbridge-Stewart sent me over to check up on you,' I began, realising that all three must have witnessed – well, we'd see.

I took them aside one by one and had a little chat separately and all three did indeed believe they'd seen a dinosaur, a T Rex, stomping up Kensington Road. The only problem with that was the sheer impossiblity of it.

Back outside, I never got to the landrover. A police officer buttonholed me on the pavement.

'What's going on?' we both said at the same time.

'Frankly, I wonder,' I replied. Always be polite to Bluebottle. 'Three of our staff claim to have seen a dinosaur walking up the high street.'

'Them and every office clerk and shopper for half a mile, sir. We got panic calls saying an elephant had escaped from the zoo, that there were monsters invading us. Then it was a dinosaur.'

I looked up and down the road. Nope, still no dino.

'The witnesses agree that it went round the corner into Kensington Church Street, and it seems to have vanished.'

'Into thin air and without a trace?' and my incredulity plainly showed.

'Hardly without a trace, sir. Come with me and I'll show you.'

We walked a little way down Kensington Road and at the junction with Kensington Church Street I understood why traffic was light; a red Mini sat in the middle of the road, smashed flat, with cars backed up along the road behind. Further back, a fire engine was leaving.

'Driver and passenger killed outright, sir. Hardly without a trace.'

Whatever damaged the car so badly must have indeed come round the corner, and the driver hit it. Hard.

'Something else is missing,' I remarked. 'No blood. If our dino hit this car head on, doing – oh, say twenty miles an hour – then where's the blood? All that sharp metal would cut it open in a dozen places.'

'Good point, sir. Plus, nobody along the street saw a dinosaur, and they were all out on the pavement the second they heard the crash.'

This began to get creepy.

'And, we've had reports from Chelsea and the Embankment about monsters running around.'

I stared at him. More monsters? Or the same one having a bit of exercise?

He stared back.

'Then UNIT shows up. Do you know anything we don't, sir?'

'I know less than I did five minutes ago. From what Sergeant Hinde told me, this thing's head was level with the first floor windows. At least twenty feet high. How can a ruddy great beast that big vanish without a trace? That's quite beside the point of it ever existing in the first place. Impossible.'

He rocked back on his heels, weighing up the sceptical young man opposite him.

'My elder brother was killed by the Autons, back in '72, sir. I'm not quite ready to dismiss anything as impossible these days.'

'Yeah, good for you,' I grumbled and went back to radio in to Aylesbury.

Private Crooke, for reasons best known to himself, was lying on the road, looking back the way I'd come. Roker stood alongside the poor tired man, ready to stop traffic. Had he fainted due to hunger?

'The only reason a UNIT trooper should be lying in the road is because they are dead, Private Crooke. Otherwise you make the place look untidy.'

He squinted hard, then motioned me down to his level.

'You can see where it walked, sir, from this level.'

Mimicking him, I found his statement to be unpleasantly true. A staggered set of dents could be seen in the tarmac, beginning in the road out of nowhere.

'The witnesses all swear they saw what looked to be a dinosaur, Brigadier,' I reported, using the radio in the lannie. 'Well over fifty of them. No, sir, witnesses, not dinosaurs. Bluebottle stated that there were two other incidents elseswhere in London. Yes, sir, I'll investigate.'

Both my trusty squaddies looked less than enthused at the prospect of tackling large, dangerous, hostile creatures that might-or-might-not be dinosaurs. They were carrying Sterling SMGs and all I had was my non-issue .45, none of which would stop a charging elephant. Or a dinosaur. Or alien monster, or whatever we were dealing with.

By the time we got to the Embankment, there was no dinosaur. There were fussing policemen, a pensioner dead from a heart attack, cracked flagstones galore, and a gaggle of Japanese tourists who were happy as Larry at what they must have imagined to be British street theatre. Leaving Crooke to look stern and official at the lannie, I picked on the most senior-looking officer.

'UNIT?' he said faintly, looking aghast. Oh dearie me, what a reputation we must have.

'Just here to investigate,' I reassured him. 'Let me guess, a T Rex?' When he looked puzzled I recalled some reading from primary school days. 'Big thing standing on two legs, mouth full of teeth like steak knives.'

'No,' he replied slowly. 'This thing was on four legs, big as a bus. Longer, even. A great long neck and tail. No teeth.'

'Where is it now?' I asked, not really wanting to find it lurking nearby. "Big as a bus" was not encouraging.

He shrugged, wordlessly.

'That's not much help. Where, exactly?'

'Nowhere! The damn thing just vanished! It went plodding off along the Embankment and then – it vanished. There one second, gone the next.'

I fixed him with a steely stare. He returned it, equally steely.

'Sounds like the other one, sir,' remarked Roker.

Yes. Yes it did.

'We've got a camera off one of the Jap tourists. He took photographs, so we'll see what they show.'

I radioed the Brig again.

'This one disappeared as well, sir. A different kind to the original. Look, sir, could this be a kind of collective hallucination? Or a film projection of some kind?'

His comments were not repeatable or printable. After a cooling-off that took several seconds, I got further orders: set up shop in Kensington Office and investigate these occurences, liaising with Bluebottle.

'Crooke, I'll drive. Okay, listen up the pair of you. I'm going to try a little bafflement with bullshine at a shop nearby, which requires both of you to look stern and menacing.'

Crooke looked at me in the way squaddies have, meaning "Are you going to get me into trouble, sir?"

'Stern and menacing, sir?' he asked.

'Imagine United lost to Liverpool,' suggested Roker. 'Five-nil.'

Call me a luddite, but I didn't have time to return to Aylesbury for bigger guns, and trying to get them off the Regular Army takes even longer.

Holland and Holland is an ancient and well-respected gunsmiths that I'd occasionally been to in the past, for .45 ammunition. This time UNIT were after bigger game. Much, much bigger game.

'An elephant gun?' repeated the proprietor behind the counter, warily. You couldn't really blame him, here are three soldiers from UNIT come stamping into his shop demanding elephant guns.

'Not specifically an elephant gun. Just the biggest gun you have.'

He rang through and the Master Gunsmith came out from smithying, smelling of oil and hot metal.

'The gentleman here would like an elephant gun.'

'Oh – I recognise you – Mister Walmsley, isn't it? A bit of a step up from pistol rounds.'

'You put your finger on the problem. We are investigating a series of attacks by large, dangerous animals on members of the public. Pistol ammunition isn't going to work on these creatures, I can't take hours to retrieve weapons from HQ and you happen to be nearby.'

Also, the Brig would take umbrage at junior officers tootling around the streets of London tooled-up with machine guns. UNIT was supposed to be covert, after all.

My story was a bit flimsy, but he sucked his teeth and looked at the other man.

'I see. I see. There was a report on the radio about escaped zoo animals on the rampage. Came on the hour, just a few minutes ago.'

'That'll be the ones. They've killed three people so far. My job is to track and resolve, and that means dropping them. With an elephant gun.'

The Master Gunsmith, his lugubrious face displaying genuine concern at the news of fatalities, scratched his head and pondered.

'Nor can I pay for the weapon,' I continued. Not on my wage. 'However, I will draw up an agreement for UNIT to pay for it at whatever the market price is.'

There were a few phone calls, muted and intense, before I got presented with a headed sheet of Holland and Holland stationery and signed away, fingers crossed that the Brig or QMS Campbell wouldn't simply laugh at it and leave me to pay.

'Now, what do we have in that will do the job?' mused the Master Gunsmith.

'There's a Brno ZKK in back, in .458 Winchester,' offered the salesman, to a neutral grunt.

'What about a Ruger? There's the M77, we've got two of them, in .416 calibre.' No, that wouldn't do, either.

An expression of enlightened amusement came over the Master Gunsmith's face.

'Oho. What about Mister Farqhuarson's gun?'

The salesman looked surprised. I couldn't follow their shop talk about gun models, so I hoped they'd come up with a suggestion soon.

The Master Gunsmith left to root about in the back, then returned, hefting a huge double-barrelled gun. The stock was dark with ingrained dirt and stains and the barrels had scores and scratches. It looked old.

'This, Mister Walmsley, is a Six Hundred Nitro Express Double. Have a heft, see how it balances.'

The damn thing was heavy, twenty pounds at a guess. At least twice the weight of an SLR.

'It belonged to one of our old customers, Mister Farqhuarson. Former big-game safari hunter. When he died after coming back home his widow sold it back to us, for our prospective museum. Break to load.'

He produced a battered, shabby card box containing bullets, great big brass-cased things.

'One hundred and thirty seven rounds. Ought to be a gross but he'd used seven rounds. Very hard to come by nowadays, and Farqhuarson made his own up. Nine hundred grains. About six times the mass of your standard rifle round.'

'Big bundook, sir,' commented Roker. 'You could club 'em to death with them bullets, at a pinch.'

'Will it stop an elephant?' I asked, and the two shop staff exchanged knowing, amused glances.

'Mister Walmsley, you can stop trucks with that gun! It will drop a charging bull elephant literally in it's tracks, on the spot. Er, can I ask what game-hunting experience you have?'

'Big game? None at all. Foxes and rabbits when I was a teen. More recently, upright creatures with firearms.' Double-meaning that one – it referred to the Autons and the IRA respectively, except that the IRA were cute and cuddly compared to the former.

'Well, treat that gun with respect, Mister Walmsley. Make sure you hold it correctly or you'll end up with broken bones, and wear ear-protectors if you can.'

So the 600 Nitro Express was a gun to be treated with caution. I stuffed my jacket pockets with bullets, making the seams complain, then sauntered forth to Kensington Office.

'Get me a map of London, large-scale if you can,' I ordered, and it was done. Crooke, Roker and myself set up camp in an empty office, with the map tacked to the wall. Bluebottle were tasked to call through "Incidents" and I'd stick pins in the reference point on the map.

Property damage constituted the biggest problem, to begin with. A section of sewer near Marylebone Station collapsed under the weight of a Mysterious Beast, which once again disappeared before Bluebottle or ourselves could arrive. Onlookers spoke of a quadruped big as an elephant, with horns, that stamped around in annoyance, gored a couple of parked cars and went off down the main road. Then another T Rex popped up in Regent's Park, provoking a mass panic amongst everyone who could see it. It vanished before managing to kill anyone this time, not before collapsing a bridge, and one frantic pensioner rang police to say her dog was missing.

Death of two theories: collective hallucinations don't tear cars apart nor do film projections shatter bridges.

Crooke obtained a transistor radio from a donor and I tuned it in to Radio 4. The news bulletins on the hour dealt with the incidents, yet didn't speculate on the identity of the beasts causing all the chaos, merely describing them as "unidentified large animals". An air of farce hung over the bizarre business, until early evening, when the Duty Officer at Aylesbury rang me.

'Walmsley here. How goes it?'

'Not too hot,' explained the voice at the other end. 'Putting the Brigadier through.'

'John? Any more information?' asked the Brig in a business-like manner. What I told him made progressively less sense even as more of the picture emerged: the prehistoric monsters would appear out of nowhere at random, rampage about a bit, then vanish again. Fortunately there had been only three deaths so far –

'Incorrect, John. You may not have heard it yet, but there are flying versions of these things on the loose. One of them attacked a BEA flight approaching Heathrow, got sucked into the engine. The jet crash-landed. Over seventy dead. The FAA are suspending all flights until further notice'

The bizarre affair had escalated. London was being invaded by dinosaurs.

Kensington Office had a small suite of rooms for overnight stays, so the trio of us from Aylesbury bedded down there. The office staff kept a wary distance from us, seemingly out of respect for the Brave Chaps who were going to go out and mix it with dinosaurs on the morrow.

That may have been the plan. Needless to say, it didn't work out. We drove around from one incident to another, four in total that morning, only for the monsters to have vanished long before we arrived. Blame London traffic.

Fatalities were on the rise. Several London drivers wouldn't live to drive again, having been crushed to death in their vehicles by one of the Big As A Bus creatures. Another T Rex had attacked screaming pedestrians near Leicester Square, killing an undetermined number. A pleasure-boat on the Thames was overturned, cause unknown, but at least a dozen people were missing, feared drowned or otherwise. A "flipper" had been seen in the water by survivors.

The air of farce had worn off rather quickly. What transformed the situation rapidly and quickly was a dinosaur sea-monster – don't ask what it was, I have no idea – swimming slowly up the Thames in front of stunned witnesses. After that Parliament sat in an emergency session, a State of Emergency was declared and the Army began to deploy on the streets of London. Prime Minister Wilson made a television and radio address to the nation and capital-dwellers in particular, appealing for calm and not to panic. RAF helicopter gunships parked on the aprons at Heathrow and Gatwick, mounting aerial patrols to keep the skies clear of Flying Dinosaur Monsters.

Did I mention that those stunned witnesses were MP's outside Westminster on the terrace? Of course that couldn't have influenced things, could it?

Feeling well out of my depth, I left Crooke and Roker to mark incidents on the London map, and drove to the Natural History Museum, because I had a cunning plan.

'You can't bring that in here, sir!' announced the security guard from his little plastic booth in the echoing entrance hall.

My guess was that he meant my Giant Anti-Dinosaur Rifle, slung over my shoulder. You could never tell when the enormous buggers would appear, so I carried it at all times during the emergency.

'You can try taking it off me,' I warned him, drawing my blouse aside to reveal the .45 automatic. 'Or, you can try getting me an expert on dinosaurs down here.' He backed off and began phoning.

Just to emphasise how unpurturbed I was, I strolled around the giant foyer for several minutes, until a gaggle of people came clattering down the stone stairs. Big fat man with glasses and beard – must be a Professor; narrower man wearing tee-shirt and jeans – research assistant; and short, dark woman with greying hair in a bob – probably Research Assistant's Mum.

'You've seen them!' yelled the big fat man, pointing at me. 'I told that idiot Toiville there were witnesses! Real live dinosaurs there for the viewing!' The chap in jeans nodded enthusiastically.

The trio drew closer, which I didn't like. Behaving with all the subtlety of a raving nutter is not a good consultation tactic. The short woman, trailing at the rear of the formation, rolled her eyes in knowing fashion: I know what idiots these two are making of themselves but I cannot stop them.

'He wouldn't - ' began the guard, before realising that nobody paid him any attention and that he'd be better off reading a newspaper.

'What have you seen? What have you seen? Tell me – tell me!' gibbered the big fat man, reaching out as if to grab me.

'Allosaurs? Iguanodons? Pteranodons?' added the man in jeans, grinning like a loon.

'You're a big one. Been eating your greens?' asked the woman, completely out of context and making me pay closer attention. She looked older than she was, thanks to prematurely grey hair and an unflattering grey twin-set. Her eyes had a wicked twinkle in them.

'Ah - er – I am Lieutenant Walmsley, from UNIT. I haven't seen anything like an actual dinosaur, yet, but given the witness descriptions I thought it a good idea to get some experts on the case.'

Both men sagged with disappointment. The woman gave me a good once-over, assessing.

'No visual confirmation? Nothing at all?' asked Mister Professor.

Big metaphorical sigh from yours truly.

'No remaining evidence. The creatures that cause these incidents vanish into thin air after appearing from thin air. Oh – and these. Taken by a passing tourist.'

I passed over the copies we'd got, which showed an immense greyish beast, with a very long tapering tail, a body like an elephants, and a long neck, ending in a tiny head. The professor and his assistant instantly began a whispered debate about exactly what it was, the words "Brontosaurus", "Diplodocus" and "Alamosaurus". Rather comically similar to the Doctor's mutterings about alien races.

'No droppings or blood?' asked the woman.

'None at all. The only proof they actually exist is the damage they cause, and those photos. One of them downed an aircraft over Heathrow and another swam past the Houses of Parliament, hence the current flap.'

By mutual agreement we all adjourned to the Professor's office, and he really was a Professor. BSc, MA, in Paleontology. His research assistant was just that, an undergraduate, and the flirting lady in grey was the prof's wife, a Doctor in her own right. Henry Kelly, Jude Collins and Ruth Kelly respectively.

The professor's room seemed to be the very clichéd embodiment of an absent-minded academic: books, magazines and paper in profusion and confusion, several plastic scale models of dinosaurs, a blackboard and a whiteboard with overlaid scribbles totally illegible to the outside observer. A peculiar reek overlay everything, which became apparent when the Professor took up a meerschaum and began to stuff it with tobacco.

'Oh, that moron Toisville will be eating his words when I lay my hands on a dinosaur,' he gloated. 'Eating his words! I know it will verify my theories, and simultaneously destroy his, verify and destroy. All we need is to be there when they appear, with cameras, with cameras. Can you take photos, Captain?'

'Actually it's -'

'Do we know why these creatures are appearing?' asked Mrs Kelly, sitting on a. 'After all – dinosaurs. Dead for sixty million years.'

'I have absolutely no idea, Doctor. That is reserved for older and wiser counsel, not me. All I intend to do is protect the public by killing these hypothetical dinosaurs.'

'Killing them!' gasped Collins.

I gestured at the Nitro Express, propped up in a corner.

'I don't carry that thing for fun.'

'Yes, killing them, that would provide concrete proof, concrete proof. Splendid! Now, Captain, how do we know when these creatures will appear?'

Trying to explain the random nature of the dinosaur's appearances wasn't easy. The fact that I was merely a lieutenant never registered with the Prof.

'Is London the only city affected?' asked Doctor Kelly.

'So far. Only inner London. No reports of any sightings in the suburbs, and we're up to a total of twenty now.'

'You can't tell when they'll appear, you don't have any physical evidence of them, and you don't know why they're appearing. Does that sum the situation up?' asked Doctor Kelly, holding up a hand to stop her husband from interrupting.

'Just about.'

'How can we catch or kill one, then,' grumbled the Professor. 'Really!'

'Then what use are we to you, Lieutenant?'

'As advisors. Mrs Kelly, my experience of dinosaurs is limited to a few picture books in primary school, and I can pretty much guarantee that's the level of experience across UNIT and the Army. Any help you give would be important.'

'Well, I don't think we can refuse a man with a weapon that big,' said the Doctor. 'Your gun!' she added when my eyebrows twitched. 'Henry, I think it in our best interests to co-operate with the officer. The data we get will be invaluable.'

Apart from her shameless flirting, the Doctor seemed to be very on the ball. Her husband, on the other hand, seemed utterly unaware of anything not connected with dinosaurs.

'Thank you. We have a small office set up at UNIT's base in Kensington, that's on Kensington Road and near the Kensington Church Lane junction. We've been correlating reports coming in of appearances and what kind of creature they were. I'll get back there and have Visitor Passes made up for you so you can come and go as you wish.'

'We'll be over with some textbooks, Lieutenant, and any other material that will illustrate dinosaurs. Henry, we'd better start on that right away. Jude, can you get over to Repro and reserve a photocopier?'

I took my leave and headed back to Kensington, where Crooke and Roker had added two new pins to the map. We now had a log book of the incidents, with times, locations, physical features of the dinosaurs and any fatalities caused. Bluebottle reported five people killed by the attack near Leicester Square. Fourteen people had been killed and another twenty-seven injured when a block of flats collapsed after a quote "huge monster" unquote materialised inside the structure. Of course, when the fire brigade, police and ambulance services got there, they found no monster.

The Brigadier came to visit in person later on that evening, typically when I'd gone to the canteen to load up on stale butties from the vending machine. I returned to our office base to find him scowling over the pin-laden map, with only Sergeant Benton in attendance.

'Sir! Didn't expect you. Do you want a rather wilted cheese-and-onion sandwich?'

He continued to scan the map, waving away the offer with his swagger stick.

'No, no thanks, John. I dismissed your two men, they looked dead on their feet. I happen to be in London because the PM is calling an emergency meeting tomorrow morning. Likely to announce the evacuation of central London.'

That didn't sound good. Benton made a rueful face.

'Were you here for the first time that happened, Sergeant?'

He shook his head.

'No sir. Still a private then, in the regulars. The Brigadier was, though, weren't you, sir?'

Lethbridge-Stewart straightened up and gave a wry smile.

'I was still in the regulars too, Sar'nt Benton, as you well know. "Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, Scots Guards". The whole thing was an appalling shambles, John, though if you read the official Whitehall and MoD reports they give the impression of flawless precision.'

Unwrapping a rather dubious sandwich, I looked at him with an appealing expression.

'Given the opportunity, a whole collection of criminals descended on the capital and looted with merry abandon. The government had been warned but didn't try hard enough or soon enough. I shall put my case with more force this time.'

'Is this yours, sir?' asked Sergeant Benton, picking up the Nitro Express.

'Ah – hopefully it's considered to be UNIT property. The biggest gun I could find at short notice, Brigadier. If I'm going to have an escort from the Museum I don't want them ending up being monster-munchies.'

Chewing the – cucumber and ham? – sandwich, I poured out a cup of black coffee to wash it down with, then explained to the Brig about my visit to the Natural History Museum. What worried me was Doctor Kelly arriving whilst the Brig was still here, and flirting with him as outrageously as she'd done with me.

'Good thinking, John! What we really need, of course, is some advice from the Doctor.'

Of course! How could one encounter time-travelling monsters and not think of Doctor John Smith, UNIT's "Special Scientific Advisor"? I mentally kicked myself for not making the connection.

'He's not been asked, sir? Surely this sort of thing is meat and drink to him.'

The Brig told me that the Doctor was absent the present. His big blue box of tricks, the TARDIS, wasn't evident, either, so he really had gone somewhere. Or somewhen.

'Don't know if you've noticed, John, but there's been a lot of people getting out of London today. Panic buying in shops, workers not turning up at the office, all in response to these incidents.'

The security guard in the front foyer then rang up. A Mister Kelly had come to visit, with a whole box of stuff, could we send someone down to help with the kit? When there happened to be a Brigadier and a Lieutenant in the room, guess who got to "help with the kit"?

Clearly, the security guard got confused when presented with "Doctor" and "Mister", because the Kelly in question was Ruth, not Henry. She had a collection of cardboard boxes in the foyer and Jude to help bring them in.

'You pop back to the Museum,' she told the lad. 'I'm sure I'll be alright here under the Lieutenant – that is, under his eye.' Jude went off like a startled rabbit.

'Doctor Kelly,' said in strained tones. 'Thank you for coming over. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is here – my commanding officer. He'd probably be glad of some advice from you.'

The good doctor refrained from comment while I helped to pile her boxes into the lift, apart from muttering "good muscle tone" in an undertone. The ride up to the fifth floor was – well, let us say "cosy" rather than "intimate", with all those boxes in there.

The instant we met the Brig, Doctor Kelly was all no-nonsense, matter-of-fact, eye-on-the-ball scientist. She held out a hand to be shaken, and gave the Brig a good hearty greeting.

'What I'd like to do, Brigadier, is interview your members of staff who actually saw the creature in question, to determine exactly what it was.' I portered her boxes into the office whilst she chatted.

'Is that important?' Clearly the Brig wondered what the point was in closing the stable door long after the horse had gone.

'Most certainly! From what the reports have mentioned, you need to determine whether the creatures you are – "experiencing", I suppose – are herbivores or carnivores. That is, plant- or meat-eaters.'

By now I was curious. What difference did it make what brand of dinosaur we got! The Brig looked similarly sceptical. Doctor Kelly remained calmly detached. I stuck a box on top of another box.

'Plant eating dinosaurs present only an incidental risk, caused by their panic under unfamiliar circumstances, and their bulk if one of the larger species. A meat eater may very well seek to actively kill people, given issues of territoriality and response to stress.'

The Brig turned to look at the wall map, as did Sergeant Benton, where red pins denoted fatalities. Doctor Kelly sat on a desk to watch them watching, taking the opportunity to cross her legs and momentarily flash her stocking garter at me.

'You alright, John?' asked the Brig, as I coughed and went scarlet. Holding up an alibi sandwich, my response was that it had gone down the wrong way. Behind him, Doctor Kelly raised an eyebrow and winked.

Bloody hell that woman was insufferable!

'Okay, I'm off to kip in one of the dorm rooms on the third floor, John. Need to be up early tomorrow. I advise you to get up early too, don't stay up too late sticking pins in the map. Doctor Kelly.'

The Brig retired, leaving me and the clearly nymphomaniac Doctor Kelly alone on the fifth floor.

'So,' she slowly began, pouring a cup of coffee. 'I hear your nickname is "Big John".'

How the hell did she know that!

'How the hell – who have you been speaking to!'

She shrugged, then threw her head to one side, regarding me.

'I rang here earlier today, to check what the procedure was for signing in, proof of identity and so on. The clerks told me about your nickname. Poor girls, they don't get much chance to gossip.'

My nickname came about through an earlier escapade, fighting the Autons, when rage and pride and stiff-upper-lip forced me to wield a Browning M2 heavy machine gun like a hosepipe. I still have problems with back muscles over that, since the Browning M2 is indeed a heavy machine gun, emphasis on "heavy". Doctor Kelly heard this explanation, with "the enemy" substituted for Autons.

'How macho!' she commented, clearly delighted. 'If only we had wine instead of coffee.'

I decided to take the offensive.

'Doctor Kelly, would you mind telling me why you are behaving like a schoolgirl with a crush and flirting to the borders of tartiness? You being a married woman?' We were, after all, in the midst of a situation where people had died by the dozens, and might still die, threatened by an impossible collection of impossible monsters in impossible fashion. Doctor Kelly's flirting was a little incongruous.

Her attitude became far more serious.

'Lieutenant Walmsley, do you find me threatening? Worrying? A promiscuous female who undermines your male ethos?'

'All three! And why pick on me?'

'I see. I see. For your information, Lieutenant, Henry would not notice if I were replaced by a naked Playboy centrefold dancing on the desk in front of him! His attention is entirely upon the events of a hundred million years ago. He would notice if I were replaced by an Archaeopteryx, or a Composgnathus, but not me, not Ruth. And why pick on you? Look in a mirror, Lieutenant.'

Matters became explicable. My current girlfriend, Marie, is a divorcee with a very jaundiced view of the modern male. She had explained some painfully concrete facts about how women viewed themselves to me. I could fill in a few of the gaps for Doctor Kelly – neglected and ignored, resorting to massive flirting to assure self of female attractiveness, enjoyed throwing men off-balance with extremes of display.

'Then he's not looking, is he? Or looking and not seeing, Doctor. You didn't put on a garter belt for me.'

She hunched over and glared at the kettle. A good hit, Walmsley.

'Doctor, I don't think you really want - '

'What do you know!' she snapped. 'Sorry. That was uncalled for. It's just - this mysterious case of monsters appearing out of nowhere crops up, putting the skids under Henry and me, except that he wouldn't realise it.' She sat back and sighed, running her fingers through her hair. 'Grey at twenty, you know. It makes me look twenty years older.'

'Er – why "put the skids under"?'

She looked at me directly, eye-to-eye.

'Are you serious? Henry's pre-occupation with dinosaurs bordered on the obsessive before these appearances. Now – now he's not going to remember he has a wife.'

Chalk up another casualty to the monsters.

'Let's unpack your kit, hm?' Get her distracted with that.

There were textbooks, photocopied sheets, colour plates, and several small scale models in plastic. I admired them and their paint scheme.

'Jude put those together. The colours are a guess, of course. That's partly why Henry got so excited at the prospect of seeing a real, live, dinosaur.'

I thumb-tacked various colour plates to the walls: Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Hadrosaur, Dimetrodon, Diplodocus, and umpteen other –saurs. The models went on a table on top of a sheet of paper with their name written on it.

The Doctor, now not laying on the flirting with a trowel, gestured at the Nitro Express.

'You intend to kill them with that?'

Stern nod from John.

'That might be harder than you realise.'

'Eh? Doctor - '

'Oh don't be so stuffy. Call me Ruth. And I shall call you B – John.'

'Alright, Ruth. I worked out the bullets that antique fires are nine hundred grain. Getting both barrels is like being hit by twelve SLR rounds simultaneously, which will put a serious dent in your day even if you happen to be the size of a house.'

She riffled through a notebook.

'It's not all about size, John. No, don't groan, I'm not joking! Many of the dinosaurs I've noted here have a very small brain, and I'm not sure shooting their head apart will stop them, especially the big herbivores.'

'I can but try. Actually, I'll get some hand-grenades sent down. A nice big bang will probably scare them silly.'

'John! The last thing you want is a thirty ton Brontosaurus stampeding in panic!'

'Thirty tons!' I exclaimed. 'You're kidding. Tell me you're kidding.'

She wasn't kidding, and showed me the text-book with a table of statistics next to it. These beasts were truly enormous. We'd need tanks to stop the bigger ones.

Outside, a clock struck midnight and the Doctor looked up in alarm.

'Oh no! I didn't realise it was that late! Damn, I'll never get a taxi at this time.'

'If you can get one. The Brig told me things were starting to unwind in Central London. Whereabouts do you live?'

'Surrey. The last train will have gone. Oh, I bet I can't even get into the Museum.'

'Normally I'm a gentleman, Doctor, but I'm not going to offer to run you over to Surrey, not when I've got to be up early. Actually - that might be the solution.'

Her eyes brightened when I told her about the small suite of bedrooms.

'Nothing fancy, just a chair, a bed and blankets.'

'You're a lifesaver, John! And because you're a gentleman, I shan't lock my door.'

My face went red again and she laughed all the way to the third floor.

The Brig and Sergeant Benton looked nice and fresh next morning, when we met in the canteen and got saluting out of the way.

'Ah , Doctor Kelly. Didn't know you'd stayed overnight. Hope you slept well - there seemed to be a bit of banging last night.'

The good Doctor inclined her head to one side, innocence shining forth from her face.

'A bit of banging?' she enquired, a gift of a sentence if ever there was.

'It's the plumbing, sir,' I hastily explained. 'Ever since that dirty great beast went stamping down the road the pipes have been playing up.'

'Be that as it may, you and I are going to Number Ten, John. The PM wants to know what's going on. Special Cabinet session, various big wigs, scientists and boffins in attendance. The one person we really need, the Doctor, still hasn't turned up yet.'

I'd never been to Downing Street before, so this was a first for me. The Brig got a greeting in person from the constable on the door, whilst I got a cold stare. A cordon of press snapped off photos, including one of the Brig disappearing inside Number Ten with me close behind him, that appeared in the Mail captioned "UNIT Commander General Stewart with bodyguard". The mess found that very funny indeed.

The interior of Number Ten was huge and rambling, so we were led to a conference room where the Prime Minister sat, with an unlit pipe in his mouth, flanked by several members of the Cabinet. Gradually other members of the committee entered and took the chairs, including a General in Army uniform. An official stenographer sat in the corner, looking professionally bored and detached.

The politicians began to jaw-jaw about this and that, mostly concerned with how the voting public were feeling. Therefore I was taken by surprise when the questions focussed on the Brig and I.

'Exactly how are these creatures appearing?' asked a minister, one of the few I knew by name – Dennis Healey, the Chancellor, famous for his bushy eyebrows.

'Unknown, sir. We presume that there is an organising intelligence behind the attacks and that they are not an accidental or natural phenomenon. Lieutenant, kindly provide some more details.'

We'd gone over what I ought to say and how on the journey here.

'Sir. The appearance of the creatures is accompanied by electromagnetic disturbances, which significantly affect radio reception. The Army is currently trying to triangulate incidents and locate a possible source, but it's a tricky phenomenon to keep track of. We further presume that the creatures are being physically lifted out of the prehistoric past, then dumped in the present and sustained here by the cause of that electromagnetic disturbance. Once the power is cut, the creature returns to the past, whether alive or dead, and so do any remains – no blood is ever left behind. Police marksmen believe they shot dead a Triceratops earlier this morning, but the creature's carcass still vanished from underneath a guarded tarpaulin.

'I believe people have been, understandably, asking questions about the origin or even the existence of these appearances. Well, over a hundred people have died as a result of these incidents. Physical damage running into hundreds of thousands of pounds has been caused. Photographs taken by tourists and shoppers have been copied and analysed and show real, concrete creatures. Dinosaurs. By whatever means they appear in London we cannot yet say, but the threat to to the population is very real.'

The Brig nodded and took over.

'No other appearances have been reported at any other cities in the UK, nor in any cities elsewhere around the world. The phenomena are purely local, and limited to Central London. Duration varies, from around ten seconds for a creature on the Embankment, to nine minutes for a T Rex in Regent's Park. Project Broom will not be deployed, in view of the lack of physical evidence to remove, but they may need to exert some influence on the press.'

The PM leaned back in his seat and puffed away at his pipe.

'We can't stop them appearing, and they tend to result in people being killed when they do appear. Because we can't predict when or where they might appear, the police or army can't deal with them effectively.'

Once he'd expressed this viewpoint, he took opinions from other ministers. Most mentioned a contingency plan – Operation Apple. This was the evacuation of Central London.

'Very well. I've asked Sir Charles Grover here since he was involved in the last evacuation. I'd like him appointed Chairman of the Evacuation Board. Proposer? Seconder? Good.'

A couple of civil servants protested feebly about evacuating London.

'We can't do that!' complained one, to be instantly upstaged by the General.

'Yes we can! The army is already standing ready. In five minutes time they can start erecting temporary camps on the outskirts of London and moving in water tanks, emergency rations and portable toilets. Given our experience of '67 we are far better prepared to deal with a mass evacuation, Prime Minister.'

'Thank you, General Finch,' said the Prime Minister, causing my memory to give a twitch.

'But in that case, we had a very visible threat, that web substance and the effect it had. Nothing that concrete this time,' complained another civil servant.

Sir Charles was one of the well-groomed men in a suit, sporting a white carnation, which matched his white hair, and with a patrician air.

'I agree with the General, Prime Minister. An evacuation will be unpleasant for those moved but far more preferable than any further needless deaths. Hopefully the dislocation caused will be for as short a period as possible.'

Within the hour, wheels started moving. A State of Emergency was declared, Martial Law imposed in Central London and the capital began to empty of people. A considerable number had left under their own power before the official declaration, and only a small number of die-hards refused to leave their premises. Our policy was to leave them and concentrate on the ones who wanted to be moved. The stay-behinds would get shifted later, providing they didn't suddenly get dino'ed. Jewellers, banks and gunshops were emptied to remove temptation. The Government moved to – Harrogate. I think as part of the wartime Cold War contingency plans Harrogate was deemed so dull and worthless that the Soviets would never bother with it.

It was a major feat of logistics, which went mostly without mishap. Once the inner capital had been cleared by sector in rotation, UNIT and the regular army ran observation patrols to keep an eye on the dinos, to shift the stay-behinds and to tackle looters. Our manpower didn't stretch any further, given that the regulars had a irreversible commitment to Ulster, and a garrison to find for the UN forces in Cyprus, and had to sustain the civilian population of the Evacuated Persons camps, and keep BAOR up to strength.

The looters were a bloody nuisance, to be frank. If unarmed then UNIT troops were allowed to "Escort and detain for a reasonable length of time", which meant handing them over to the regulars at the Detention Camps, for processing. If armed then orders were unequivocal – shoot to kill without warning, though in practice I know squaddies both UNIT and regular avoided firing unless fired upon.

UNIT had several HQ's established around London, two north (Kensington Office being one) and two south of the Thames. We were tasked with trying to control the dinos, if at all possible, since we were more used to the fantastic and incredible than regular troops. Supposedly!

There was a touch of humour amidst the unpleasant and bizarre. A film crew from the BBC were detained and removed from the controlled zone. Apparently they were mad keen to get shots of a deserted London for future use in film and television programmes, since UNIT and the regulars had arranged it for free, whereas having to manage it under normal circumstances costs lots of money.

Amongst those permitted to remain were my trio from the Museum, all regarded with incredible envy by their colleagues, who considered being eaten or crushed by a dino as small price to pay for academic immortality. We also had a Mister Swanepoel.

Mister Swanepoel had arrived the day after evacuation commenced, turning up on our doorstep in a suit that bulged under the armpit, lugging several cases and a Permissory Certificate. Anyone not carrying a PC could be evac'ed immediately.

Our office staff had been evac'ed theselves, so one of the squaddies rang up to say that a large gent in civvies and talking funny wanted to see the OC.

'That would be you, wouldn't it, eh?' called Nick across the room from the phone, where he'd taken the call.

'That perceptive wit will be the death of you yet, young Munroe. Okay, show him up.'

Operations was based on the second floor of the offices, with all the third floor converted to sleeping quarters, the fourth floor for off-duty Other Ranks and the fifth for general storage. I proudly sat in possession of the biggest room with the biggest desk on the third floor, having been there at the start and able to get my oar in before anyone else.

Mister Swanepoel turned out to be a big chap, suntanned, crew-cut and with a steely strut to his walk, barely able to avoid saluting me.

'Swanepoel,' he introduced himself, not offering a hand. A pronounced South African accent.

'Sit down and take the weight off your holsters,' I sarcasmed back. He stared at me for a second and then grinned.

'Can't take a risk, not with the bleddy looters out already.'

I cursed quietly. The scum were rising to the occasion far too quickly for my liking. The big South African settled himself in his chair and cast an eye over me, the office and what he could see of the others.

'I wouldn't worry too much, it's just single ones at the moment. The gengs have yet to get back inside the perimeter.'

Them, yes, and all sorts of other nutters were trying to get back inside the cordon.

'What brings you here, Mister Swanepoel?' South Africans were pretty much persona non grata with the Wilson government. With most of the Western world, actually.

He scratched the back of his neck.

'Your government had a word with my government, and my government asked me to volunteer to help your government. So here I am, volunteering.'

Okay, now I really was curious.

'What can you help with, Mister Swanepoel? There are several thousand soldiers currently garrisoning and patrolling London. How can you help?''

Without speaking he unzipped a long leather case from the assortment he'd brought, pulling out a bolt-action rifle, then a long telescopic sight.

'A Ruger, loaded with .457 Magnum rounds. From my days as a big game hunter.'

Now the penny dropped. Tracking and killing big game, okay, not the same as killing dinosaurs but in a pinch the best bet.

'I see. What kind of game have you hunted?'

'Most of them. Buffalo, lion, rhino, elephant, hippo, crocodile, amongst others.'

'Hippo!' I laughed, before stopping at the expression on his face.

'Man, you're just showing your ignorance. The hippo kills more people every year than the crocodile. Out of water it can manage a burst of speed enough to outrun a man, and in the water it likes to bite canoes in two. Dangerous beast. I've also hunted the upright hairless ape.'

Me too.

'Well, welcome on attachment. We have an Operations section here on the second floor. Transport is in the underground car park, canteen on the ground floor. Dorm is on the floor above, go and claim a bed and get your kit settled in.'

He picked up his stuff and turned back to me.

'Your men aren't going to nick my stuff, are they? Some of this kit is expensive and mine.'

I gave him a locker key and he disappeared upstairs. More egg in the pudding. Who or what would be next? Making out patrol rotas, I stuck Mister Swanepoel in with Four Section; he could sub for Private Pooley, out of action with an infected ingrowing toenail.

The bane and nemesis of my existence, Lieutenant Nick Walmsley, in charge of the other platoon, stuck his head round the door and raised his eyebrows. Silently, wielding a pen, I pointed to a chair.

'What do we have the Great White Hunter for?' he enquired. 'Apartheid suddenly in flavour again?'

'Big-game hunting experience.'

'Pooh. These things are not simply big, John, they're immense. Anyway, we still have you and your mighty weapon.'

'Unfired so far. Look, what are you after, really? I'm trying to work on an inventory of rations, water, bottled gas and diesel and when we next need to collect more.'

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

'Sure the pressure isn't getting to you? Doctor Kelly asked me to keep an eye on you. And she's been very mumsy with us. Not an innuendo dropped.'

I chased him away with muttered curses and pen-waving and he left to hunt vanishing dinosaurs. Nick's preferred method was using a Bedford with an anti-aircraft cannon mounted in the rear. My instructions to the brick he went out with were not to let the lieutenant anywhere near the weapon in case of an encounter, especially if the boffins went out with him, as they did this time.

The Bedford came back only an hour later, much too early. Noticing the rumble it made driving into the underground car park, I left my office and hovered uneasily around the radios and typewriters of Operations.

First up the stairs was Jude Collins, clothes scuffed and covered in dust, face white and taut. The Prof came next, walking unsteadily, his lips swollen and bleeding, a big bruise on his cheek, followed by Ruth, who sobbed uncontrollably. She had a black eye, and her clothes were ripped at the seams, showing skin underneath.

'What the hell! Have you been fighting!' I blurted, only to have Ruth fall against me and bawl helplessly.

'In there you - ' came the voice of Corporal Higgins, hard, nasty, bristling with hatred, and lots of swear words. Three men, hands locked together behind their necks, came stumbling into the room, at the point of Higgin's Sterling, a spike bayonet fixed to the end. Nick followed after with Browning drawn, looking pale and angry, very serious indeed. Rare for him. Comprehension began to dawn on Lieutenant Walmsley.

'Sergeant Horrigan – get these three seen to medically. Send for the MO. And get Doctor Kelly a spare uniform. Ruth? Ruth, you need to sit down, here, next to Henry. Prof? Keep an eye on her.'

A rage was beginning to start up in me, I could feel the tenseness in my stomach. My dad's holy writ had been that men do not hit women or children, a lesson I have taken to heart. Back to the three prisoners, who all looked very battered; broken noses, missing teeth, black eyes . The other four men of the patrol came in, looking angry, one swinging a riot baton. The prisoners were forced to sit on the floor under the muzzle of five Sterlings. None dared to look me in the face.

'These three looters -' and Nick indicated the prisoners ' – caught the Prof and his wife away from us and beat them up. Then they decided to have a little fun with the Doctor.' His voice was low and cold.

'We were- ' began one in his late teens, before Corporal Higgins kicked him in the face.

'Corporal!' I hissed, feeling my hands sweating. 'I will hit them if any hitting is to be done.'

'Yessir. Sorry sir.'

I went back to Ruth, the Prof seeming still in shock. Jude was breathing heavily, looking tearful.

'Ruth, did these three attack you?' A nod from Ruth. 'Sexually assault you?'

'No,' she said in a small voice. 'Jude went for them. Then the soldiers arrived.'

Back to the prisoners. I had to struggle to keep my voice level, so I leant in close.

'You animals are only breathing because the lady's injuries appear to be superficial, not to mention the Professor's. Big brave lads, aren't you, three to one. A woman at that. Not more than five feet six. I find a right hook to the windpipe especially effective.'

They were all shaking now. Nick said afterwards I didn't raise my voice beyond a whisper, but nobody was in any doubt about what I said.

'I'm going to interest myself in you after the emergency. I'm going to be following you every so often. And if you misbehave then you won't have long to regret it.'

'Don't kill us mister!' whimpered one.

'We could throw them off the roof,' suggested Nick, probably only half-joking. 'Say they got stamped on by a dino.'

'Please!' sobbed one.

'Give 'em a Browning, then shoot 'em,' suggested Corporal Higgins, probably not joking.

My temper started to settle.

'I'll give you a choice. You can walk down to the foyer and we'll tell the Detention Camp staff that you're all rapists. You might not see the end of the week that way. Or, you get thrown down the stairs.'

They took the throwing option, which was sensible. The DC's operated on a harsh pecking order and rapists or child-molestors didn't survive long. I went down the corridor and punched a door.

Harry Sullivan turned up minutes after we sent the looters off, still radiating an air of cheerful inanity in the midst of this crisis. He checked the Prof, worried about concussion and referred him to Barts, which had a skeleton volunteer staff still running. Ruth got a sympathetic checkover, Jude a bandage on his hand for skinned knuckles.

'Thanks for rushing over, Harry.'

'Not at all, John. Nice to be able to treat something simple for once. Incidentally, your own knuckles seem to have encountered something solid. Looter face?'

'Office door,' I confessed. 'I managed to manage my temper this time.'

'Good thing, too. I'd rather not have to do a post-mortem on three bodies, thank you.'

He breezed off, looking as if he were going to play a game of mixed doubles on the centre court later that afternoon.

Nick came over, still gritting his teeth with anger.

'Evil little scrotes. Robbery and rape while the country falls apart and we try to stop it. Unbelievable, eh? Scum.'

He carried on in this vein for a minute, then stopped dead and gave me a malicious smile.

'You notice she swooned into your arms, not her hubby's?'

My cheeks abruptly took on the colour of cooked betroot. Birdsweat. If he noticed then everyone else must have.

'Big shoulder to cry on. Sympathetic mien. Closest male.'

I got a knowing look and a sly nod of the head.

'Baffoon. Go and write out a report on this for the Brigadier. Oh, and you'll need another copy for General Finch.'

My next job was to take Jude and Ruth a cup of tea in their pokey little rooms. Not just any tea, this was proper Sergeant Major's tea, made with evapourated milk and tablespoons of sugar per cup. Excellent pick-me-up.

Jude lay on his camp-bed, dozing, so I merely put the cup on his table and left.

'Come in,' said Ruth when I knocked. She had shed her torn clothing and now had on a khaki boilersuit.

'Hey, on you it looks good,' I half-jested. Actually it did, knocking years off her appearance after the staid twinset.

When she turned round her left eye was puffy and nearly shut. I winced, handing her the mug of tea as she sat on the bed.

'Sorry.'

'You're sorry?' she said, surprised. 'What did you do wrong?'

'You three are under my protection and it's my responsibility to discharge that duty effectively. I didn't. Next time we go out I'm coming too, and if any looters get in the way - ' I left a macho silence hanging because from now on any armed looter would get Lesson One from me.

'Tea?'

'Not just any tea. This will stick to your ribs, put hair on your chest and steel in your backbone. The second you might not want, thinking about it.'

I sat on the bed next to her, trembling a little with the after-reaction. Ruth, sipping her tea, looked at me curiously.

'Are you alright? You're shaking.'

Big sigh from me.

'Just the effort to control my temper. If they had done or said the wrong thing I'd have killed them. On the spot. Hell, if they'd so much as looked at me I'd have beaten them boneless.'

She snickered.

'I like that phrase – "Beat them boneless". Very Clint Eastwood.'

Avtandil Abuladze had used the phrase in conversation with me. I didn't feel like explaining who he was or how I met a Georgian six years previously in the Soviet Union. Suddenly she began to cry again, leaning against me.

'They would have killed us, for nothing,' she sobbed. Feeling slightly completely out of my depth with a crying woman, I put a consoling arm around her. She held my hand and cried herself out, eventually blowing her nose on a tissue and giving me a watery smile.

'Your brick will be talking about us behind your back for being in my room this long, you know.'

'Oho, "brick", is it? You've had Nick Munroe coaching you in slang, eh?' I stood to leave. 'Right. No more patrols for you or Jude today. Stay in here, get plenty of rest, ring Operations if you need anything. Play the invalid for the rest of today.'

Next order of business was Jude. He sat on his bed, mug in hand, staring into it.

'Thanks for helping to protect Doctor Kelly, Jude. Nothing like that will be allowed to happen again, believe me. For now, you and she are to stay in your rooms to recuperate. No, no arguing. You're not going out again today. Like I told her, ring Operations if you want anything.'

It only struck me later than Ruth didn't ask about her husband at all. When I returned to Operations all eyes were carefully averted from mine, a sure sign that rumours were in the air, about me.

'Corporal Higgins – neither Doctor Kelly nor Jude are going out again today. You can take the Bedford out again in ten minutes. Lieutenant Munroe can stay here to complete the report, I'll take his place.'

Moue from Nick, obviously not happy at being baulked of the chance to kill dinosaurs.

Thundering out of the underground gloom into daylight was a bracing experience. I'd brought along the Nitro Express and we left the cannon's ammo drum back in the garage. One thing that militated against blowing holes in the dinosaurs was their ability or tendency to vanish; it wouldn't look good if we hosed down a row of houses when our target disappeared before the rounds hit.

The patrol routes varied over time, shifting sectors to cover more ground and hopefully intercept big beasts running around loose before they did too much property damage. I navigated in the passenger seat whilst Corporal Higgins drove.

'I'm surprised you didn't hit them ruddy swine, sir,' he commented out of the blue.

'If I had started, Corporal, I wouldn't have stopped. Left here.'

We were near Euston Road Station, and I began to feel cold. No, not simply cold – the hair on my arms was standing up, and prickling on the back of my neck.

'Slow down, Corporal. Slower. Christ, what's the matter with me – can you feel that?'

The corporal stared at me between gearing down. An electric tingling made itself felt in my mouth.

'Can't feel anything, sir. Bloody hell – could there be a dino nearby!'

He put the brakes on further and I wondered if he'd guessed right. The phenomenon whereby they appeared wasn't actually known. Perhaps I was picking it up.

I banged on the cab wall.

'Dead stop! All out!'

The six of us debussed and formed a skirmish line across the street. I unslung the Nitro and shivered. The eerie prickling, tingling had diminished.

'Hilllllfe!' screamed a voice from around the corner, female, pitched high in mortal fear or pain or both. A snarling, growling hiss cut off the voice.

'Advance to contact!' I shouted. 'And be careful!'

'Too bloody true,' commented Corporal Higgins on my left as we swept around the corner.

Bingo.

There was the dinosaur, standing thirty feet tall (in reality only eighteen but at the time it seemed like thrity), grey-green, mouth running with blood. It had ridiculously small forearms, which were also covered in blood. On the pavement lay the remnants of a body, apparently ripped apart. A pair of civilians cowered back against the railings, screaming. The monster ripped at the corpse with one huge, pillar-like leg, then stooped to bite at the mutilated remains.

Corporal Higgins gave the ugly beast a burst from his Sterling, and another squaddie gave it three rounds rapid from his SLR. The beast got annoyed at this greeting, snarling, tossing it's head and throwing slavers of blood onto the pavement. Then it seemed to catch sight of us and attacked, moving surprisingly quickly.

Putting the Nitro to my shoulder I fired, giving it both barrels at once.

I don't know who got the bigger surprise, the dinosaur or me. With a sound like thunder, the gun went off, and my shoulder felt as if a horse had kicked me. I shook my head to get rid of the ringing and to get my hearing back, which it gradually did.

' –ck me, sir!' said an awed Corporal Higgins as my ears started to work properly. The dinosaur, as he described it, physically jumped backwards as both bullets hit it in the head, rolled it's eyes upwards and dropped on the spot. Just to make sure I gave it another two bullets, fired from the left shoulder, into the head.

Walking around until ringing stopped and ears started, I recalled what the chap at Holland and Holland said – use ear protectors. Wise after the fact.

The two civilians, a stubbly man in his thirties and a smartly dressed woman with too much make-up on, were at their wit's end with terror. A slightly damaged cine-camera lay on the pavement, alongside stout canvas bags from which wires trailed, to a big TEAC tape deck on the flags.

'Are you injured?' I asked, all concern, and probably far too loudly given the state of my ears. They responded with a gabble of – German?

I'd done the German course for a tour of the BAOR, but never actually got to use it, and could barely understand what they said.

'I can translate, sir,' said Private Richards. 'Wife's German.' A short session of intensive German took place whilst we others put a tarp over the sad remnants, and Corporal Higgins took photographs of the dead dino.

'German film crew from Frankfurt, sir. HR-3. Come to get an exclusive on the abandonment of London. They sneaked past the cordon and got into the Underground, came up by the Tube station, then started to carry out filming. The cameraman – the body – started to film the announcer – the woman, sir – and the sound man got the tape rolling. Cue sudden arrival of monster, which went for the cameraman straight away.'

Words failed me. Would these idiots have risked climbing into the lion's cage at Whipsnade to get a story?

I radioed into Kensington, asking for a body bag and explaining that we'd had a contact and killed a dinosaur; faintly in the background came the aggrieved shrieks of Nick and Ruth, both mad with envy that they weren't here.

Well, they didn't have to load the remains of the cameraman into a body-bag, either, when the Landrover came out to meet us. The driver said I needed to take the body to UNIT HQ at Stoke Newington, with the recording equipment and the surviving German television crew.

'Sir!' yelled one of the squaddies as the woman got helped into the Landrover's passenger seat. 'The dino!'

Expecting it to have come to life again, I got ready to cut loose with both barrels. Instead the massive carcass began glowing, radiating a rainbow effect that made everyone skip well clear of it. Gradually the dark bulk faded, the road and pavement beneath it coming into resolution, until the corpse had completely vanished. All that remained on the road and path were bloodstains from the gore that had splashed the rampaging creature.

We looked at each other with sagging jaws.

'Okay. It's gone. Fair enough. Make sure Doctor Kelly gets those photos, Alan – ah, Corporal Higgins.'

'Sir,' he replied, not looking at me. Another private cautiously stepped forward and waved his hands where the monster had lain, not discovering anything.

UNIT HQ at Stoke Newington had taken over an empty school standing ready for demolition. The research people trucked in from Haylings House were pleased to get their hands on the German telly kit, hoping it would help to pinpoint the source of the Dino Deploying Device.

Harry Sullivan had to make out a formal cause of death for the cameraman, a process which dampened even his enthusiastic good humour. The two survivors were kept in a schoolroom until a member of the German embassy staff in Cambridge came to shout at them, after which they stiffly apologised via him for causing trouble and left.

The Brig, meanwhile, wanted to see yours truly.

'Verbal report, John, before I get to see the paperwork. Carry on.'

We were in the staffroom, or what had once been a staffroom. Now there were trestle tables, radios, maps and charts on all the walls. The Brig went through a stack of flimsies and listened to me recount the tale of the dead dino.

'Ogden! Radio Battersea and tell them these march tables are utter nonsense. I expect to see proper ones in an hour's time. Sorry, John. Carry on.'

Next were the details of the German television idiots. The Brig's eyebrows expressed exasperated disbelief.

'What do these people think they're playing at! We don't evacuate a major city and patrol it with armed men for amusement. Good grief, the media will never fail to trouble my liver.'

Once dimissed, I made my way back to the Landrover, where my driver was attacking a huge sandwich with determination. He held up a leather satchel before I could reprimand him, or confiscate the sandwich.

'Dropped off when they pulled out,' mumbled the driver, spitting crumbs.

"Dear Mister Walmsley" read the note stapled to it. "Please find enclosed the receipt you made out to H & H. Given the circumstances, after several days reflection, we feel it churlish to charge you for helping to defend the public. Also, we have added several rifle furnishings that may be useful. Good luck and God speed."

The accessories consisted of a perforated rubber butt-pad, a pair of big, oval leather patches and a bulky pair of ear-protectors. Mister Swanepoel explained that one sewed the patches onto your jacket to help soak up recoil.

Mister Swanepoel's stock sat high in Kensington Office that evening. He had seen and killed a circling bird-bat-monster at Temple Bar, dropping it with a single shot, then insisted the section return to Kensington flat-out, allowing Ruth to examine it in detail for nearly twenty minutes. Her response on seeing the hideous thing, I am told, was to leap into the air with excitement, then dance in a circle and hug Swanepoel, shouting 'Pterodactylus!'

To keep the men occupied, out of mischief and informed, I asked Ruth and Jude if they'd do a presentation to us in the evening, explain a little about dinosaurs and how they behaved. After they agreed I went up to the fourth floor, where the squaddies cavorted when off duty.

'Bloody hell! You could bottle the air in here!' I coughed after sticking my head round the door, assailed by cigarette fumes. Assorted soldiers looked around at me, ready to salute. 'And use it as poison gas. At ease, at ease. Just to let you know I want everyone to attend a lecture the Doctor is giving at seven. Dino facts for the modern soldier.'

'Will she be wearing a short skirt, sir?'

'She fancies you, sir!'

'Her dress is her own affair, and if she fancies me it just shows what good taste she has. Seven o'clock, then.' I carefully ignored comment on the photograph of General Finch stuck to the dartboard.

Ruth got a mild reception from the troops, which I appreciated, as they can tease unmercifully if the mood is on them. She demonstrated different species, possible behaviour, weak spots, speed, gait, in less than an hour and not being didactic about it. Jude put in some highly theoretical specualtion on habits that caused eyelids to droop, at which point Ruth would intervene.

That night in Operations she pinned up photographs of the dinosaur I'd killed, together with a set of the Terrydacktil.

'Your kill was a Dilophosaurus, John.'

'A what-a-saurus?' goggled Nick, hovering in rear.

'Dilophosaurus.'

'Oh! I thought – never mind, never mind.'

'You're not making these names up, are you?'

'John! It's one of the precursor large bipeds, a theropod carnosaur. Look at that bony crest. And the colouring! Remarkable, isn't it. From the size of the carcass I'd say it was an immature male, not fully grown. Oh, and that creature Sergeant Hinde saw wasn't a T Rex. From his description I'd say it was an Allosaurus, since he mentioned ridges on the snout.'

'Oh, yes. I quite agree. John was sceptical but I told him, "John – don't you recognise an Allosaurus when you see one?" Bit of a stick-in-the-mud, old Walmsley.'

'You're lucky we can be understood as off-duty, you baffoon. That way I don't have to chastise you.'

'Do you always insult each other?' asked Ruth, not sure whether to laugh or not.

'Incessantly. Nick's pater gives me an honorarium each year to torment his son. Helps to stiffen his celery-like backbone.'

'And with Walmsley, why, who can resist a foil as foul?' beamed Nick.

'And – I'm going to regret asking this – what's a baffoon?'

I smirked.

'A cross between a baboon and a buffoon. No brains, but a brightly-coloured bum.'

'Did John mention his intimate acquaintance with the lower primates? Close family, I understand.'

Ruth rolled her eyes in mock despair. I don't wonder, we could keep up this banter all night long.

Mister Swanepoel, nursing a coffee and sandwich, came over. There were few troopers loitering in Operations, since it was late, dark, and entertainment lacking.

'Doctor, how do you kill one of those type of creatures?' he asked.

Ruth looked at him with a degree of deliberation.

'In these carnivores, I would recommend that you aim for the head. The brain, eyes and nose are all definitely located there in a compact space. Going for the heart is guesswork, I can't say with any degree of certainty where the heart is located.'

'Lungs?'

'Upper chest, but so large that a shot might not be effective. If you couldn't get the head, perhaps the knee joint would be vulnerable. Immobilise and kill.'

The South African nodded, cupping his chin in one hand and generally looking thoughtful.

'I did think of trying to get a steak or two off one, make a change in this bleddy awful diet, except the whole creature vanishes along with any body parts left behind.'

Ruth sadly nodded. Her prized Terrydicktal went the same rainbow way as my Dilophosaurus.

'In fact – where would a cook lay hands on supplies round here?' asked Swanepoel. The limited diet we ran to didn't appear to appeal to him.

'We get food trucked into Stoke Newington and collect it from there. Private Pierce has a list of requested stuff, mention what you want and he'll add it on.'

'I mean in the shops, man, how do we arrange to get it from the shops.'

'Anything fresh will have gone off by now. Anything frozen will have defrosted and gone rotten,' said Nick, also curious as to what the Great White Hunter was up to.

'If you want to stay legal, then I can give you official UNIT indents and you can leave those in lieu of money.'

'Fine!' said Swanepoel, all smiles. He got a whole pad of the flimsies and left for bed – or at least that's what I hoped. Ruth went to ring Barts and find out what progress Henry was making.

I went up onto the roof, using my privileged keys to get through the locked door at the very top of the internal stairs. From this sixth-floor vantage point an observer could see night-time London. Pigeon-droppings crunched underfoot as I tip-toed over the lead flashing to the northern edge of the building, past algae-greened skylights and mossy air-conditioning plant. My vantage point was a sturdy housing for an air-conditioning unit.

Normally the view from here would be a fantastic constellation of lights in varying colours, sprawling in a complex grid pattern, mostly static, a few moving, with a background rumble and hiss of traffic. Now most of the city lay dark, only strategic street lighting still getting power. Occasional islands of light showed the lonely volunteer medical and fire services still operating. Everything lay silent, utterly so. A great dark patch straight ahead would be Holland Park, with Kensington Gardens an even larger dark space to the east. Bluebottle had swept both from end-to-end on the first day, looking for tracks or droppings or monsters.

Another's footsteps sounded on the roofing behind me. Assuming it was Nick with a bottle, I merely waved a hand.

'Come and take a perch, you Celtic tart.'

'How impolite!' replied Ruth. 'And I'm certainly not Celtic.'

I whirled round, to see her walking cautiously over the roof towards me.

'Ahem! John apologises for major faux pas. I thought you were Nick. He's incredibly jealous that I bagged a dinosaur, so he might well come to moan.'

She leaned against the air-conditioning unit next to me and looked out over the dark, dead metropolis. A feeling of sadness and regret shaded her conversation.

'I came to apologise for being so tactless down there.'

'You tactless! Nick Munroe wouldn't know tact if it flagged him down by the kerbside. As for me, I am a gentleman who would never notice a lady being tactless. Except when it involved garters. I nearly choked on that sandwich, you know.'

She ducked her head to hide the smile, trying to stay serious.

'John! No, I meant this - ' London below, indicated with a sweep of her arm. 'I mean, look at it. Deserted. Two hundred people dead. The economy going slowly down the drain, tourism killed overnight, the government gone to ruminate in a sea side resort. Desperate for everybody except the palaeontologists. We love it, whilst everyone else suffers. So – I came to apologise.'

'You've done some suffering of your own, Ruth.' Here would be a moment of truth. 'Not to spoil the atmosphere, but how is Henry?'

A deep and heartfelt sigh.

'Oh, cause for concern, they told me. The doctors found a fracture. Kept in for more x-rays and observation.'

Mixed blessings.

'And your eye?'

'Sore. Nearly closed. It'll get better. See?'

She turned to me as I leaned in close to get a look and our faces bumped together. The bump turned into a kiss. The kiss turned into something different.

'Wow. Where did a staid academic learn to do that?' I asked, not expecting an answer.

'Where did a cold-blooded killer learn to emote like you?' responded Ruth. Fair enough criticism!

'Sorry, Ruth. I bite my tongue. One of my credos is not to judge a book by it's cover.'

Still leaning back against the air-conditioning, I put my arm around her. Not sure what was going on here, really, but Ruth deserved a little compassion and company tonight.

'Oh! What's that!' she squeaked. Away in the distance, a series of glowing yellow balls rose slowly into the air at an incline, moving at three hundred degrees relative, to be followed long seconds later by the sound of gunfire.

'Looked to be large-calibre tracer rounds, over a mile away. Probably one of the Contact Patrols shooting at dinos.'

'What did you mean about a book and its cover?' she asked. Women. Never able to leave a question unanswered.

'You tell me about not being Celtic and I'll explain.'

I can't render properly in print the cocked eyebrow and look of caustic amusement that came after my challenge.

'John, my married name is Kelly. Doesn't the "Ruth" part give it away? If I said "The Sons of Abraham"?'

General Wolfe had scaled the Heights of Abraham, and Abraham had needed to do something pretty dire in the Bible, and there my knowledge of Abraham stopped.

'You'd be a daughter, anyway, not a son. Secret society? Charity? Fan club?'

She punched my bicep good-naturedly.

'Baffoon! My maiden name is "Frankel". Does that help?'

'Frank L Baum – wrote The Wizard of Oz? You're a millionaire thanks to the royalties?'

'Frankel – F-R-A-N-K-E-L. John, I am Jewish.'

A long silence hung over the rooftop whilst I waited for more.

'Is that it? Sort of an anti-climax. Mind you, it does explain the non-Celtic part of non-Celtic.'

Ruth stared at me with a strange, concerned expression. She seemed to have expected more.

'Ruth, I did a tour in Ulster, where people who you could not tell apart were perfectly happy to kill each other on the basis of different strands of Christianity. I'm not saying I don't believe in God, just that religions pay far more attention to their mutual differences than their common ground.'

She harrumphed.

'Let's move on to the book and it's cover.'

'Well, look at me.' I stood upright, away from the plant unit. 'Six feet six, eighteen stone. Lancashire accent. Working-class parents. Guess how I got on in the army and at Sandhurst.'

This was unfamiliar ground for her.

'Sorry – I – John, I don't know.'

'Well, I lost my name a couple of times. That means I got referred to as Cadet Number 0170665, instead of Lieutenant Walmsley, as a punishment. There are some unbelievable snobs at Sandhurst, who think it amusing to pick on other cadets. They picked on me twice. After the second time, when they were picking up teeth and wiping blood off the walls, it seemed a good idea to leave Walmsley, John, Cadet 017665, alone.'

Which was howlingly ironic, considering that I had a 2/1 in Political Science from Leeds University. The big, brutal-looking, stupid, bucolic-speaking cadet actually had a brain and the ability to use it. And at University – oh, my, had I come in for stick there!

'To Joe Public, Big Equals Stupid. Superficial but true.'

Ruth looked up at me.

'I see what you mean by judging on appearances. Why, anyone looking at my fingers would notice a lack of rings.'

We adjourned from the roof.

Next morning, I got a list of dino-drop procedures to follow, drawn up by various palaeontology teams now attached to the separate HQ's. These were vetted by Ruth and Jude, who gave grudging acceptance. The procedure to follow in case of carnosaur contact was: to shoot it to bits in short order. Refinements were added in light of Ruth's recommendations to Swanepoel. Sterlings were fairly useless for tackling the big boys, even if they were handy at tackling looters, so SLR's and Gimpys got re-issued to every other man. Ruth recommended that we keep the SMG's issued, because of a family of dino's called "Ornithomimidae" – ostrich-sized meat-eating sprinters. There were similar-sized beasts whose names blurred by and I shelved. As for the Big-As-A-Bus but only eats grass type, we were advised to herd them away from property, not to panic them and only to open fire as a last resort. One regular army patrol had fired over a hundred nine mill rounds at a Brontosaurus before it vanished, still moving and upright.

Morale in the detached UNIT HQ teams was a problem, with an emergency of unknown duration to be coped with, poor catering and a lack of entertainment. Having an "enemy" who vanished under your nose didn't help, compensated for by being able to lay into looters.

Thus far we hadn't come across any armed gangs, but that morning we got a flash bulletin: an NCO from the regulars had been killed when his patrol came across a gang of armed looters. Two looters also shot dead, an undetermined number escaped. I made a point of telling each platoon member to wear a flak-jacket on patrol, even if they were uncomfortable sweat-boxes.

Mister Swanepoel proved to be resourceful as well as a good shot: he busied himself in the canteen after returning from a solo shopping expedition, then brought a giant vat of soup up in the lift at lunchtime, with a big catering tray covered by a tea-towel.

' "Soosboontjes" ,' he explained. 'Spicy bean soup. I couldn't find any tamarind sauce for it.'

The soup was spicy and the squaddies loved it. They were even more impressed when Swanepoel whipped away the cloth to reveal a batch of rolls.

'Baked 'em myself,' he boasted, in response to enquiring looks.

'Top effing bloke,' mumbled Private Pierce around a mouthful of soup and roll.

'In some places I've bin, you have to look after yourself. No shops nearby for your daily loaf.' Dab hand in the kitchen, that man. Thanks to this I decided we needed to be more pro-active in catering, instead of relying on Stoke Newington sending us the bare minimum.

Nick strongly suggested that we go out and liberate a few stereos and TV's, leaving indents for them. "Pro-active entertainment" as he termed it. "Nearest thing to looting" I deemed closer to the truth.

'No can do. The Brig has forbidden "inappropriate requisitions". Food is fine, anything with transistors isn't.'

Providence intervened. Providence, Fate and the Grim Reaper. I took Two Section out for a patrol and we heard breaking glass coming from further down Kensington Road – one of the give-away signs of looters. Slightly incredulous that looters would strike this close to UNIT, we moved to take them on. Leaving the Bedford, Crooke, Pierce and I were the right hand part of the brick, Roker, Timms and Corporal Ashworth the left-hand. Using hand-gestures I directed us down the pavements, doing a bit of leapfrogging. The left-handers came across an off-licence with the door smashed in – untouched yesterday - and ventured cautiously inside, covering each other. We three crept along the pavement, watching the off-licence, to be taken by surprise when a man stepped out of a shop doorway just in front of us.

He levelled a gun and let fly from the hip, hitting Private Crooke and knocking him flat. This was a colossal mistake since it gave me reason to shoot and also gave me a clear field of fire. The looter got both barrels of the Nitro in his chest and flew off his feet, back through the plate-glass window.

Break and load, ignore ears ringing, check Crooke.

Crooke's flak-jacket saved him from serious injury. Nevertheless, he could barely speak, having the wind knocked out of him. The looter had used a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun loaded with ball-bearings, which broke a couple of Crooke's ribs. I got him propped up against the shop front and passed his rifle to Pierce.

Corporal Timms and his patrol members came out of the off-licence at a run, prodding two men in front of them at bayonet-point, one clutching his upper left arm.

'Sir! Contact? What happened?' called Timms. Pierce led them into the shop to look for other men while I loosened and removed Crooke's holed flak-jacket, covering the two looters with my .45.

'Nobody in there, sir,' reported Pierce.

'What about the one I shot?'

'Well, sir,' replied Pierce, blandly. 'His insides are now mostly on the outside.'

Yes, the window-display would never tempt shoppers again. Morbid curiousity made me go and look at the dead man, just to see his face.

He looked surprised, and pale. Dark stubble, scratched cheek, greasy hair, probably not able to keep clean and smart whilst on the loot. Did I feel upset or worried about having killed a man? No. Not then.

'Pierce, double back to the Bedford, bring it back here and we'll send Crooke over to the MO at Stoke Newington.'

Pierce, a bit pale around the gills, sprinted off.

'You two nongs. Get him out of the window,' ordered Timms. The pair of robbers managed with difficulty, since the corpse was mostly hole between sternum and navel and one of them had a bayonet-wound to the bicep.

'Where's your transport?' asked Corporal Timms. The two robbers remained sullenly silent. 'Come on, come on, you didn't walk here or expect to walk away, not with those crates of booze.'

Still nothing. They were beginning to annoy me.

'Ashworth, Roker, split up and start looking for cars or trucks these two might have used. Corporal Timms, you stand guard over those two. Any trouble, bayonet them.'

'Right you are, sir. Bayonet them. My pleasure, lads,' said Corporal Timms with a cheery air.

At this the twosome began to look uneasy. What could be so bad about the transport they had that they didn't want it found? Giving it up was the only way they could expect leniency in the Detention Centre.

Roker found the Ford van they'd been using, picking it out from other vehicles by the simple expedient of putting his hand on the engine of each car he passed. When he whistled Ashworth and I doubled over, to a small cul-de-sac off a side-street.

'That Ford, sir. You can see boxes of stuff in the back if you look in past the driver's seat.'

The rear doors were unlocked, so I had a nosey inside. Boxes of drink, collected bottles and packets from Boots – drugs, doubtless – some Bang and Olufsen stereo kit.

Ashworth saved a life by checking other cars nearby.

'Sir, this Jag's been used as well.'

The interior was covered with cigarette butts, empty cigarette packets, crisp bags, empty drink bottles and newspapers. No sign of loot.

Roker unrolled a toolkit from his pack, winked at me and used a screwdriver to gouge out the passenger-side door lock, allowing us access. We discovered an elderly Webley revolver in the glove compartment. Roker lent me a screwdriver and I lifted the weapon out by the barrel. Three of it's chambers were empty and it smelt of cordite. Recently used.

'Good God!' exclaimed Roker, having opened the boot, his stolid face displaying shock and horror.

As well he might. When I looked in, I saw a teenaged girl, naked, battered black and blue. Her blond hair was matted with blood, her face puffy with bruises and a length of gaffer tape covered her mouth. Her hands were bound together at the wrist with electrical cord, and her ankles similarly tied. Both hands and feet were turning blue. At first she shrank from the light and the strangers, until I reached into the boot and lifted her out, to sit her on the pavement.

Ashworth took off his combat jacket and put it around her, patting her on the shoulder as he did so.

'Roker,' I hissed between clenched teeth, 'go and get clothing from those two we caught.'

'On it, sir.' He pressed his compact little toolkit into my hand before leaving at a run.

Ashworth kept up a constant stream of reassuring chatter all the time, banal nonsense in a fatherly tone.

I didn't dare go myself, or there'd be two corpses stretched on the tarmac. Unrolling the toolkit, I found wirecutters and severed the electrical wire, then helped the girl to rub life back into her hands and feet. The gaffer tape was a problem, being securely pressed down and likely to rip off skin when removed. Remembering the off-licence, I sent Ashworth to get a miniature of vodka as Roker returned with a shirt and pair of trousers.

Dressed and more presentable than before, apart from the gaffer tape. When Ashworth came back I held up the vodka.

'This will act as a solvent on the glue.' I soaked my scrim scarf with vodka and dampened the tape, which came away reluctantly but without removing any skin.

'Thankyou,'she whispered. Private Ashworth held her up and walked her back and forwards to get circulation going in her limbs, keeping up an inane flow of banter in Geordie.

Private Pierce had radioed in to Kensington before leaving to get Harry Sullivan at Stoke Newington, and Sergeant Horrigan sent out a Landrover to us. The girl, who hadn't spoken since those first two words, sat in the passenger seat. I took a spade from the vehicle side, striding back to the two prisoners, one of whom now had only underpants on. Roker called the whole situation in.

No wonder that man stepping out of the shop had fired straight away. No wonder neither of these two wanted to let us know where their transport was.

I hit the first prisoner full in the face, with the flat of the spade, and got the second in the side of the head with the handle. Both lay stunned, the first bleeding from a broken nose and smashed mouth.

'Bayonet them now, sir?' asked Corporal Timms, the humour gone from his voice. He had a daughter about the age of the girl we'd found, a daughter whose photo he'd shown me.

'No need, Corporal. If I wanted them dead, I'd have used the sharp edge. No, that's just a little something to remember UNIT by.'

The man I'd hit first had lurched back into a sitting position, blood running from his nose in a small stream. His accomplice lay back and groaned.

'Hey, lads, look on the bright side, you're still alive!' I said, controlling the anger fantastically well for me. 'Of course, that might only be temporary. We hand you over to the regular army, you see, and we'll be sure to tell them about your mobile rape motor.'

The second prisoner had winced when I mentioned "regular army". Corporal Timms noticed and squinted at me.

'Sir – d'you think these buggers could be the ones who killed that Regular NCO?'

'Oho! Do you know, Corporal, you could be right. There's a Webley revolver that's been used recently in their car. And they had Billy No-Belly over there with his sawn-off.'

I gloated at that.

'Lads, lads, lads! You really are up the creek. Murder. Attempted murder. Rape. Kidnap. Conspiracy. Breaking and entering. Carrying firearms. If you survive the Det Camp you're not going to get out of prison till you're middle-aged. Given that you may have killed a regular, I think it's odds-on whether you even get to Det Camp.'

' "Shot while trying to escape" has a certain ring to it, sir,' commented Corporal Timms.

Once again we sorely tried the jolly-hockey sticks demeanour of Harry Sullivan. He gave the girl a quick inspection and sent her off to Barts immediately.

'Raped, poor thing,' he told me. 'Broken cheek-bone, missing teeth, contusions on wrists and ankles, bruises over seventy per cent of her body. I'll ring Barts and tell them to get a psychiatrist in from beyond the cordon. I believe you have another body to inspect?'

I gestured at the limp bloody bundle lying on the pavement beneath a shattered glass shopfront. Harry went off to inspect the deceased, coming back with a piqued expression.

'Good Lord, John, what happened to him!'

'I gave him both barrels of an elephant gun at point-blank.'

Harry eyed me and my unemotional demeanour.

'Oh aye, did you. Listen, I wouldn't spread the news about this. The Geneva Convention probably outlaws that sort of thing.'

He turned to go, then turned back to look at the prisoners. Strikingly, he didn't bother to check them over, which indicates how angry he must have been, to ignore the Hippocratic oath.

'You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! London is dying by inches and you come along to dance on the corpse, you wretches. UNIT and the Army try to protect people and you exploit the situation. You thoroughly deserve what's happened to you. Thoroughly!' he lectured them as they listened, wide-eyed in alarm at the well-spoken nutter.

The Regulars had been informed over the radio net about the capture, and tootled up in an Alvis Stalwart.

'Sah! CSM Ferguson here to take custody of prisoners!' bellowed a small, ginger-haired NCO who swung out of the cab to land at my feet. A dozen squaddies in combat gear debussed from the Stalwart, then closed in on the prisoners.

'Very good, CSM Ferguson. There's a body to remove as well.'

'Sah!' he shouted. 'Move that body.' Squaddies moved the body. 'Prisoners to be restrained.' The prisoners were ungently handcuffed. 'Remove prisoners.' The hapless looters were physically thrown into the rear of the Stalwart. 'Sah!' shouted the small fiery dynamo, saluting ready to leave.

'CSM Ferguson,' I called, staying his departure.

'Sah?'

'Make sure they get to the Det Camp alive. With charges of murder and attempted murder, rape, kidnap, assault, grievous bodily harm, conspiracy, firearms offences and God knows what else, their chances of living the week out are non-existent.'

He saluted.

'Duly noted, sah!'

Once back in the cab and driving off, he leant out to call to me.

'Sah! Their chances of living today out are non-existent!'

'That's correct, Brigadier,' I radioed in. 'The off-licence door is easy enough to board over, but Dixon's window is far too large. We'll need to remove their stock to prevent looting.'

He gave a provisional okay, and I gave Nick a silent thumbs-up. Providence! The shop window I'd blown to bits, thanks to dead airborne looter, fronted an electrical goods retailer. We loaded the stock onto the Bedford and piled most of it in the basement of Kensington Office.

"Most of" did not include the television and stereo that went into the staff rooms for Other Ranks and NCOs and another pair that went into the Officer's Room – that is, the clutter room on the fifth floor.

Mister Swanepoel revealed more interestingly relevant abilities, when he came back from a patrol with Four Section. Private Benning came into Operations clutching a pair of dead ducks, flinching under the gaze of Nick, his OC.

'Bennings! What the blue flying flip are you up to!'

The trooper couldn't manage a salute correctly whilst carrying the expired game birds.

'Er sir dead birds gathered up under recommendation.'

Nick looked around for the Recommender, ready to shout at them.

Swanepoel came onto the floor, nonchalantly carrying a brace of Canadian Geese over his shoulder.

'I say cheps, look what we found.'

Nick and I exchanged looks.

'Bennings! You idiot! Killing ducks!' snapped Nick.

'Yes!' I joined in. 'Don't you know that the duck is an oily and fatty bird. Geese on the other hand are a welcome addition to the platoon diet.'

'Found dead in the park,' explained Bennings, dropping the dead birds.

'Possibly killed by heart failure,' said Swanepoel. He swung the bulky carcasses of the geese onto the floor and laughed at our incredulity. 'Really, it can happen. Not normally with birds like these, but these are not normal times. I think they may have encountered a dinosaur in the park.'

'You didn't k – you didn't find any dead swans, did you?' asked a horrified Nick.

'Swans, Mister Swanepoel, are a protected species under the Crown. Only the Queen can have them for dinner,' I explained. 'Swan poachers are strung up from the nearest lamp-post.'

Mister Swanepoel hadn't found any swans. Phew. He proved adept at plucking, gutting and filleting the birds, grilling them under the canteen's electric elements. Once again the squaddies loved him, a cupboard love enhanced by their ability to play records and watch ITV.

Being British Army offshoots, Nick and I invited Ruth, Jude and Mister Swanepoel to the Officer's Room after tea.

'This port is from pater. He sent a box to Stoke Newington.'

'Very civilised. A toast to Munroe Senior.'

Okay, down to business.

'Mister Swanepoel, can you show us how to bake? Flour and dried yeast won't have gone off in the supermarkets and fresh bread – well, you saw how the troops loved it.'

The South African looked amused.

'Sure, boss, no problem. Cooking in a kitchen is pretty easy compared to the field. Your canteen kitchen has plenty of equipment.'

For an evil Afrikaner swine, he was okay.

Ruth, bless her, worried about me having killed a man. I'd like to flatter myself that she worried about me for my sake. Nick held forth on the scum that were robbing and raping in London while we tried to hold the line against dinosaurs.

'You're feeling okay?' asked Ruth, sipping port delicately and looking at me over the rim of the glass.

John took stock of himself.

'I'm fine. In fact the thing that worries me about killing that man today is that it doesn't worry me. Not a bit. I only wish I'd been quicker on the trigger so Crooke wouldn't be in hospital.'

Swanepoel cocked an eye at me. One got the impression he'd done quite a bit of killing in his time; big game and the upright hairless ape.

'So I'm a terrible man. That's now official.'

'You've never shot a man before?' asked Swanepoel.

'No. Monsters and – er, shall we say, other enemies, but not people. Oh, I've popped off rounds in Belfast. Never hit anything. Anyway, this is a bloody morbid topic and we didn't invite you here to depress you.'

Diplomatically, Nick put a record on.

'This'll soothe your savage breast, lugubrious one. Oh wait a minute, you hate all music, don't you?'

'I don't,' stated Ruth with vigour. 'What is this?'

'Pink Floyd. I collected a whole set of records from the local library, which I will return from our protective custody when the emergency finishes. Ah, look at the mighty Walmsley laid low by a pedal steel!'

Feeling mocked and unloved, I put the telly on. The BBC had a regular "State of London" bulletin at ten o'clock, after "Steptoe and Son". The sitcom wasn't something I'd normally watch. Tonight it represented a safe, cosy, almost halcyon view of London before the State of Emergency got declared. Swanepoel shook his head in wonderment.

'Two dirty men in a collection of rubbish in a junkyard?'

The news concentrated on the deplorable looting and robbery now taking place in London, rather than the Incredible Dinosaur invasion. The only film of a dinosaur anyone had managed to get was a shakey, badly-focussed sequence of the T Rex in Regent's park. A few other questionable clips were displayed, then lots of property damage. General Finch spouted a few platitudes, looking saturnine and almost Machieavellian. "Extra measures are being taken" he hinted, looking as if he wanted to twirl the ends of his moustache and sneer for effect.

'Hey, I remember him!' exclaimed Nick. 'The pater calls him "Henry Wilson" and detests the very air he breathes.'

All eyes cast upon Nick.

'Who is "Henry Wilson"?' asked Swanepoel.

'Now, this I remember from lectures, and at Sandhurst. He was a general entirely too friendly with politicians of the day. That, and given to intriguing.'

'Was he ever!' declared Nick. 'Finchy, I recall, got up at a meeting of the Liberal Party at Blackpool to make a speech. Not in uniform, and a fringe meeting, so he survived the flak that came his way after a bit of grovelling. Still, entirely too fond of politicians.'

Being malicious, Nick put a record by T Rex on, and told us so, plus my little mistake with the phone call from Sergeant Hinde.

'Well you don't expect dinosaurs to go gallumphing down Kensington Road at mid-day.'

'I'd rather be tackling dinos than those scum who come robbing,' complained Nick. 'I volunteered to help deal with quote exotic threats to the human commonwealth unquote, not pilfering little -'

'Yes thank you Nick, mind your language, ladies present. We follow our orders. Which are currently to deal with looters and dinosaurs.'

'I'm not a china doll,' scolded Ruth. 'I can deal with swearing.' In a huff, she swept off to bed.

'You be careful,' warned Nick, once again serious. 'Messing about with married women.'

'Pot. Kettle. Black.'

'I don't have a current lady outside the cordon. And Doctor Kelly has what you like – intelligence.'

'You, romancing the Doctor. Wouldn't hev thought it, Lieutenant.'

'I am not romancing her! She's had a horrible experience and deserves a bit of compassion.' And Marie was outside the cordon whilst I was inside.

'Oh Mister Swanepoel!' trilled Nick, fluttering his eyes. 'Big John is merely dishing out TLC! I feel so – so reassured.'

Next morning I had to fill out a formal report on the fatal shooting. Ruth volunteered to help type it out. She had learned to type as an undergrad, and continued afterward graduation to earn the necessary extra pennies. This was good news for me – my fingers have all the delicacy of bananas.

AAR

DEP: WALMSLEY, J. LT. 927854

LOC: UNIT KENSINGTON OFFICE

DATE: 08/08/75

INCIDENT:DATE: 07/08/75

TIME: 10:30

LOCATION:KENSINGTON ROAD

KENSINGTON

LONDON

OC:WALMSLEY, J. LT. 927854

FIREARMS USED:YES

ROUNDS DISCHARGED:TWO (2)

PERSONNEL PRESENT OFFICERS:1

NCOS: 1

O.R.S: 4

UNIT FATALITIES:NO

UNIT INJURIES:YES

INJURY DETAILS:PVT CROOKE 10442323

BROKEN RIBS (3 OF)

CONTUSIONS TO UPPER TORSO

CIVILIAN FATALITIES:YES

FATALITIES DETAILS:ONE (1)UNIDENTIFIED CIVILIAN

NARRATIVE:WHILST CONDUCTING FOOT CONTACT PATROL,

UNIDENTIFIED GUNMAN OPENED FIRE ON PATROL

WITHOUT WARNING. LT. WALMSLEY 927854

RETURNED FIRE. GUNMAN SUFFERED INSTANTLY

FATAL INJURIES. PVT CROOKE 10442323 SUFFERED

INJURIES TO RIBS.

'Boffo! Thanks very much, Ruth. That would have taken me ages.'

She twiddled her fingers triumphantly.

'Not quite past it yet, Ruth, girl. You, Mister Walmsley, can make me an especially nice lunch in return.'

'Deal.'

Nick took a phone call from one of his uncles, a colonel in the Whatsit and Whoevers. He became progressively less happy during the call, eventually slamming the phone down into it's cradle with considerable force.

'Uncle Mac. Counselling considerable caution in the case of General Henry Wilson Finchy, who is generally perceived as being up to no good. No details available – yet.'

I sent him back to the library to get a selection of books for the off-duty squaddies.

'What kind of books? Libraries don't stock copies of Playboy or Men Only.'

'Use some initiative. Classics. Famous novels. Novelisations of films. Sci-fi. Horror.'

Ruth's "nice meal" constituted an omelette. I whisked it up alongside Swanepoel, who supervised two squaddies making a mess; that, or bread.

'Thanks for the eggs. Where'd you get them?'

'Laying birds in the park, ectually.'

This chap knew how to survive in the wild!

'How did you sleep last night?' he asked, tone carefully neutral.

'Pretty well. I did have a recurring dream about shooting the looter dead. '

'A "recurring dream". Not a nightmare.'

'No. Sorry if that confounds your expectations.'

'Oy! now cover the bits of dough with a damp cloth and put the tray over that pan of boiling water. You can leave it for half an hour now.'

The squaddies vanished for a wet and a wad upstairs, and Swanepoel leaned back against the worktop, folded his arms and regarding me with interest. I carried on chopping onion as finely as possible.

'I'm sure you think I eat boiled black babies for breakfast,' he mused. 'In fect the first man I ever shot and killed was white. One of my own platoon, in fact.'

That got my surprised attention, the knife nearly taking off the end of a finger.

'A miserable village in Namibia, near Walvis Bay. The kaffirs had been collected into a group for P check and he went mad, I think. Nine months service without a break I was told afterwards. Up goes his rifle, bang bang bang, he starts to slot the kaffirs. Nobody knew what to do, he ignored me yelling to cease fire. I put a bullet into the back of his head from just about where you're standing.'

'Pretty ruthless.'

'Pretty desperate! A panicky junior officer doing the wrong thing under pressure. There was a court martial, exoneration, transfer to another unit. I was a wreck for a week. I can still remember every detail of it, you know. The dust, the heat, the flies, the noise.'

I started to sautee vegetables. Mister Swanepoel didn't give out information like that for no reason.

'You, you could give lessons on "pretty ruthless"-ness, Lieutenant Walmsley. Not bothered at all by shooting a man apart only twenty feet from you. Back then, I needed a bottle of booze to sleep the first night. You seem to be just fine.'

The beaten eggs went into the pan, and I looked at me from the viewpoint of me.

Was I bothered by killing that man? No. It wasn't an act for an audience, I genuinely didn't care that he was dead.

This wasn't a particularly pleasant thing to discover. From Russia, I knew how intense my rage could be – literally killing. Back then, the dead were insane monsters from outer space, not humans, and I didn't care how many of them I killed. And yet killing a human bothered me just as little. An insight like this is great for characters like Dirty Harry or James Bond, less so for people like me who think of themselves as Nice Rational Everyday Folk.

'Don't forget to brown the top,' pointed out Swanepoel.

I finished the omelette under the grill, then flipped it onto a plate and served it to Ruth piping hot.

'Delicious!' she declared, when the plate was empty. 'I haven't seen an egg for a week.'

Almost overnight, the number of looters apprehended declined dramatically. Nobody could suggest a satisfactory reason for this.

'Maybe they've run out of things to nick,' suggested Jude, pinning up photos on a hitherto blank wall.

'Please don't use that word,' winced Munroe. 'And there are still endless amounts of things to loot. Perhaps the cordon's been beefed-up again.

Having thoroughly wallowed in sordid normality, we rapidly returned to the bizarre and brontosaurian. Lieutenants Eden and Spofforth, two recent inductees, came calling on the Kensington Office.

Ruth was typing up notes about observed behaviour in the large herbivore species, being read aloud to her by Jude from notepads, and chewing a biro reflectively when the two officers walked in.

'Oho! More fit young men!' she called to me in my office. I ambled outside to witness Ruth measuring both men for fit. Only with her eyes.

'Your secretary's a bit forward, sir,' said Eden, saluting smartly. 'Eden and Spofforth, sent out for familiarisation tour.'

'Doctor Kelly has a strange sense of humour, Lieutenant Eden. Don't you, Doctor?'

She winked hugely at me, getting a roll of the eyes in return.

'Why the tour?'

'Shortage of warm bodies, sir. Aylesbury's been emptied of everyone bar the sentry.'

Introductions were made to the NCO's, Mister Swanepoel, Ruth, Jude and the absent Nick Munroe, out looking for things to shoot. Operations, Accomodation, Kitchen, Off Duty Rooms, Officer's Room and underground car park were all displayed.

'We've met Lieutenant Munroe already. The gunfire got our attention,' said Spofforth.

Gunfire. Nick Munroe. This could be either interesting or alarming.

'Gunfire?'

'Simply enormous racket in Regent's Park Gardens, sir. We detoured to investigate and found a UNIT Bedford mounting an anti-aircraft gun. They were following a – what was it again?'

'Brontosaurus.'

'That's it, a Brontosaurus. Good God, sir, the bloody news reports don't do those things justice! Big as a row of houses. The lieutenant gave it a burst when it headed for the housing on the edge of the park.'

'Hit it, didn't kill it,' added Spofforth. 'It took the hint, moved away.'

The typing stopped. Ruth looked up in annoyance.

'I hope he doesn't try to kill it! That thing could stampede anywhere if it gets frightened.'

Damn! He must have gotten ammo from somewhere else, the rascally fixer. Thirty tons of stampeding brontosaurus – imagine a Sherman tank in second gear heading in a random direction.

'And – er – that's when we saw theknightinarmour, sir,' finished Eden rapidly, looking at the floor.

There was a pause whilst I digested this information. They didn't appear to be trying it on, nor would they come up with a silly story like that and present it to me unless it was real.

'A knight in armour. A knight in armour?'

'On horseback, sir. Dirty great Percheron, trotting along between the trees.'

'Looked pretty realistic,' added Spofforth.

'Did he see you?'

'Ah – couldn't say, sir. We drove over and by the time we got there -'

'He'd disappeared,' I interrupted. 'Came out of thin air, went back there. Similar things happen with the dinosaurs.'

Great! Now we were getting refugees from the Middle Ages turning up on London's deserted doorstep. What next – Spitfires and Me 109's? and I made the mistake of thinking out loud.

'Oh! That'd be top fun!' declared Eden, with relish.

'You never got to see "The Battle of Britain", did you?' I commented. 'Poor deprived boy.'

In fact from that day on the RAF did start sending helicopter gunships over London, the better to spot dinosaurs and tackle them. A slightly liverish Brigadier warned us to keep clear of General Finch, who was pressing Sir Charles Grover to have all looters shot on sight, armed or not.

We got Official Guidelines about looters and looting. Apparently the solo looter had ceased to operate by now, looting was being undertaken by organised gangs. There were two types of gang: quiet and noisy. Quiet gangs concentrated on robbing a shopping list of items and getting out of the cordon corpus intactus; Noisy gangs were out to rob, rape, drink, drug and drive across swathes of London until they sobered up, ran out of drugs/victims or were killed. Or they had been, until now. Yes, thanks, Military Intel, coming up with out-of-date information after the crisis.

A brighter spot on the horizon was the return of the Doctor, who then got himself arrested by the regulars as a looter, then promptly fell foul of General Finch, then nearly got himself killed trapping a T Rex, and all in the course of a day. Busy chap, the Doctor.

'Trapped a T Rex?' goggled Ruth, who had been out with Two Section following a hadrosaur. I'm sure she made these names up to amuse herself and mock us. The hadrosaur was an ugly beast that stood upright like the Dillysaur and the T Rex yet was a herbivore.

'Stoke Newington called up an Antar to get it over to a hangar. An Antar – a tank transporter. The Doctor gimmicked up a dino-doping gun that renders them pale and hungover, so we brave chaps can chain them down.'

Ruth sat with her mental gears whirring at high speed for several minutes, before beginning to ask all sorts of questions about the Doctor, his qualifications, academic history, specialisms, published theses –

'Look, Ruth, the Doctor is just about the cleverest person you or I will ever meet. I shall try to get you an introduction. Just don't be surprised at anything he says.'

She harrumphed.

'Surprised? I won't be after - have you heard what General Finch has been saying to the press? "Some mad scientist has been breeding these creatures and allowed them to escape". What an imbecile!'

The official position was nothing like that. What was Finchy up to?

That evening a contact patrol from Stoke Newington lost a man to an attack by three "Velociraptors", dino killers as big as a man, running on their hind legs at speed. The rest of the patrol shot the lizards apart in a fusillade of Sterling, rifle and machine gun fire.

'I warned them about that, didn't I?' asked Ruth, when Nick tactlessly told her. 'Those pack dinosaurs? I did warn them?'

'Yes!' answered Jude and myself simultaneously. 'The Ornothopmiradi-whatsits,' I enlarged. 'Ostrich-sized. Bird-brained. Much as a certain officer.' Glare of megawatt intensity directed at Munroe, who affected an air of "Who – me?"

In fact Ogden, the RTO at Stoke Newington, declared that the relevant information never reached their patrols. We in Kensington Office knew about the hunting-in-pack dino's because our experts were resident alongside us in the same building; the ones at HQ got bussed in each day. A cock-up in communication – we thought. Surely not General Finch's fault – we thought.

Then came the frankly incredible news that the Doctor was responsible for the dinosaurs, and that he was to be shot on sight; Nick gained some malicious amusement radioing in various fake alerts and recognitions of the Doctor across dozens of Central London locations, until our vicarious amusement ended when he was reported captured. The Windmill crew who reported the news were very sketchy about the details of who had captured the Doctor, and where, not to mention where he was being taken. At the time we merely thought the AAC were being typically stupid, but afterwards I reckoned they may have been smarter than given credit for.

Another bizarre communication came through from Stoke Newington – that General Finch had ordered the evacuation of all personnel from Central London. Stoke HQ had to move out because the poultice general infested their premises on a regular basis. We at Kensington sat tight, especially after getting the warning from Nick's uncle.

Given the dinosaur activity to date, which had been steady if not precisely predictable, the massive increase in appearances out of nowhere took us all by surprise. Afterwards we learnt that this was the crux of the Mysterious Them's Plan – ensure London entirely evacuated by fear or death-by-dino.

A beleagured me sat in the Operations room, dealing with calls. Nick was out with all four of his sections, and two sections of my platoon were out. That left the remaining two sections, Ruth, Jude, Mister Swanepoel and myself. UNIT had killed off twenty seven major dinosaurs tonight alone, despite having to partially pull out.

'Is that thunder?' asked one of the privates on radio duty. A bass rumble had sent trembles around the building.

'No,' answered Swanepoel immediately. 'That's ground vibration caused by the movement of mass. Mass of considerable size. Typically, a herd of large animels.'

'Lights out! Blackout discipline!' I shouted. The good thing about shouting at UNIT soldiers is that they pay attention, and within two seconds all artificial lights were turned off. We then sat in darkness, peering out of the windows.

'Look! Look!' gasped Ruth in combined alarm and excitement, pointing at the street below us. The rumble grew louder and closer.

'I say!' chirped Lieutenant Eden, here to observe for tonight.

With no street lighting, the torrent of stampeding, horned quadrupeds below was an impression of pillar-like legs, bodies big as elephants, huge neck rills of bone and multiple gigantic horns. The whole of Kensington Office shook, perceptibly, when the herd of dino's ran past.

'Wow. Once in a lifetime opportunity,' said Ruth, taking photographs. 'Triceratops and Styracosaurs.' She shot off half a dozen photos, complaining about lack of light and distance.

I was slightly more concerned with the civilian cars being smashed to scrap below by the living panzer column.

'Contact!' radioed in Nick. 'Notting Hill Station. A Stagsaurus. Preparing to knock him into next week.' Cannon-fire echoed in tinny reproduction around Operations.

'Stegosaurus,' corrected Jude.

'Victim,' I corrected. Nick does so like things to shoot.

The RAF had come up with an anti-dinosaur methodology that would have seen the State Of Emergency ended quick-smart if the Doctor hadn't sorted out the real problem. The RAF plan was to cruise over the city in a helicopter, and then to attack any dino appearing with anti-tank missiles. It needed daylight to work, so they couldn't help us now.

'Sir,' said a very puzzled Private Pierce, on radios. 'The evacuation order's been counter-manded. Sergeant Benton says to detain Captain Yates on sight. And the Doctor's gone to sort out the whole thing at an Underground station.'

'Any news as to why we're getting whole herds of rampaging dinosaurs?'

'No, sir.'

'It may be their response to a dramatic change in stimuli,' offered Jude. He had come out of his shell a little since getting beaten-up. 'After all, there you are browsing in the grasslands of the Late Cretaceous, when suddenly you get whisked away to a mysterious artificial landscape where the noises and smells and sights are completely different. Net result – panic. Or, in the case of a carnivore, fight not flight.'

'What do you – Ruth?' I asked, to an empty table.

'Gone downstairs to get better photographs,' said Swanepoel, cleaning his rifle.

Understandable, if not exactly safe. Feeling uneasy, I went down after her, taking the Nitro from my office. She wasn't on the first floor, so I went down to the foyer, where she stood peering out of the doorway. One of the glass-and-metal doors lay on the floor, unseated by the herd of earth-shaking monsters.

'Would you mind telling me if you want to mount a solo recce?' I complained. 'These beasts are turning up in packs, now. Three Section nearly got wrecked by a parade of Diplodders.'

'Ahum.'

'You're not listening, are you?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Your flies are undone.'

'Okay – what!' She turned to tell me off. 'John, there are some creatures moving around out there. Man-sized. Quite a way off.'

'Looters? No, not likely on foot this close to a UNIT HQ. Dinosaurs?'

'Ye-es. Moving as a pack. Quite fast and agile. Getting closer. There!'

I looked and saw a quick scurry of motion seventy yards away, and also heard a quick scurry in the darkened rear of the foyer, amongst the potted palms, magazine racks and chairs.

There is that saying about feeling your flesh creep. The hair on my hands and neck stood up, which may have been mere fright or the same effect as when the Dillyfoosaur turned up.

'Ruth,' I whispered. 'We've got company. Move slowly outside.'

Eyes wide with alarm, Ruth did so, followed by me moving slowly backwards and unslinging the Nitro. A dark shape as large as me stood up behind the chairs, backed up by another and another. They paced forward and stopped, close enough to the stairway to prevent us getting there.

Once outside, I backed us up against the wall to the left, backing away from the foyer and the oncoming creatures Ruth had seen. A strange chirruping call echoed down the street, to be answered to our rear. A flurry of movement came from our right and three loping man-sized dinosaurs emerged into the roadway, casting their heads from side to side.

Several seconds of cursing later, we realised that the creatures were in front and behind us; we were being hunted. I pushed Ruth into a shop doorway. She was panting in fright.

'John, I think those are Deinonychus. They're really dangerous, pack hunters, fast and smart.'

'Don't hyperventilate! The first shot I fire will get everyone from Operations on their feet and down here.'

Brave words. The first shot might also trigger an attack and would give our location away instantly. I tried the shop's door handle: locked. The door was mostly glass, so shattering it would definitely give away our location. Also, I'd only got the two rounds in the Nitro and my .45. The pistol rounds might stop one dino, but there were at least six out there.

More chirruping, an incongruously bird-like and harmless noise. The chirruping changed to clicks and hisses and the three advancing lizards came on faster.

Well, there it was, they'd spotted us. They looked like smaller, slimmer versions of T Rex, coming on at a run.

'Cover your ears!' I hissed, stepped forward and shot one in the head and a second in the throat.

The first target's head flew apart like a dropped cup, the corpse continued to run, off to one side and into a parked car, falling over onto it's back, the legs pedalling away for a second then sagging to a stop. The second target jerked backwards and dropped like a stone.

Dropping the now-useless Nitro, I sighted on the third customer along the .45 barrel.

Matey didn't like the loud noises, nor what had happened to his friends. He stopped, and I put four rounds into his upper chest – his head moved too much for an accurate shot there.

The creature shrieked like a banshee, then tore at its chest, before staggering towards our doorway. I shot it in the eye, and it went down, thrashing.

Using the Nitro barrel, I smashed the door glass, reached in and unlocked it. Ruth got pushed inside.

'Hide at the back,' I whispered. Untying my scrim scarf, I used it to grab a large piece of glass, as long and sharp as a dagger. There were only three more bullets left in the .45, and it had just taken five to drop one of the nasty little buggers.

The ones from our left came into view – and oh dearie me there were four of them. They were warier than their dead friends, chirruping to each other, giving me enough time to get inside the shop and lock the door. Given their mass they'd probably be able to just smash it open, or even jump in via the shopfront window.

One of them jerked sideways, danced peculiarly for a moment, then dropped dead on the pavement. His cagey mates looked all around for the reason, hissed at each other, then suffered another nasty surprise as another of them sported a sudden third eye, a big red hole in the forehead. This dino lashed out at his pals, shrieked and screeched and jumped about before keeling over, still kicking.

Dino's three and four displayed the smarts that Ruth claimed they had and left in a hurry. The old rainbow effect rippled around the dead dinos and they vanished into thin air.

Thirty seconds later the trouble guys arrived, toting Jimpys and hand grenades. Swanepoel led them. I found out from Corporal Timms that Swanepoel had shot both Deinononnies; Corporal Timms knew this because Swanepoel had been hanging out of the third floor windows with his rifle, Timms hanging onto the South African's belt to stop him falling out.

The dinos in the foyer were vanished, never even seen by anyone but Ruth and I. They had, however, managed to completely smash the place up before disappearing, more efficiently than a coachload of football fans.

I led Ruth out onto the pavement, a consoling arm around her.

'You both okay?' asked Swanepoel. We nodded and his eyes fell upon the Nitro. 'Bleddy hell man! No wonder you knocked them dead! My papa carried one of them.'

Private Ashworth carried my rifle for me, chatting to Ruth in a constant flow of homely nothings. Timms poured both of us a stiff drink back in Operations.

'That's it. No venturing forth unless in section strength,' I stated. Ruth didn't speak much, just clinging on to me for reassurance. Poor girl. About to be killed by creatures sixty five million years out of date, hunted down like a rabbit. She toughed it out, not doing much in the way of weeping, and even managing a smile and comment about data on Dromaeosaur hunting patterns.

Well, a fat lot of good my resolution was. We weren't to know it but that was the end of the Incredible Dinosaur Invasion Of London. This didn't become apparent until early the next morning, when Stoke Newington radioed us with the glad tidings that Doctor John Smith had located the base of the Mysterious Them, led the Brig and Sergeant Benton there also and destroyed the equipment that generated dinosaurs. Sir Charles Grover had been declared "Missing", said Bryson, the Stoke Newington RTO.

'Ask him about General Henr – about General Finch,' I told Pierce, our RTO.

'Arrested, sir. He was one of them – the people bringing the dino's into London.'

Incredulous doesn't begin to describe it. Nick, clad in vest and underpants, scratching his nether parts, wandered into Operations.

'Why the unholy racket at this hour? Us brave dinosaur slayers need our sleep, you know.'

'Crisis over. General Finch has been arrested, sir,' said Pierce, with entirely too much enjoyment.

'What for?'

Pierce explained and Nick snorted with malicious amusement.

'See! "The Doctor is responsible" my hairy white – oh hello Doctor Kelly –' and he vanished to get dressed.

'Good news – well, good for us, not for palaeontologists. The crisis is officially over. You can go and see Henry and boast to him about all the dinosaurs you – ah – what's the matter?'

A pale-faced Ruth, exhibiting little emotion, informed me that Henry had lapsed into a coma, and then died, shortly after that first phone call she'd told me about. Cerebral haemorrhage.

I sat down. You can only take so many surprises at once.

'Why didn't you tell me?'

She looked at me, her head cocked to one side.

'Because you would have sent me away. The single most important event in palaeontology since the science began and you would have sent me away. Compassionate leave or some nonsense like that.'

'Compassionate leave?' and I bit my tongue to avoid saying anything too cutting.

'John, I will mourn Henry in my own way and my own time. We were living together on our own, in a marriage that ended for all intents and purposes ten years ago. I can respect his intelligence and commitment and integrity, even if I – if I had no partner.'

This was getting deeply personal and emotional.

'I will mourn him,' she continued, daring me to interrupt. 'But in the meantime, can you imagine him wanting me to abandon the observation of living, breathing dinosaurs in the flesh, at short range, over a period of days?'

Thinking back to my first meeting with the Prof, all insane enthusiasm and massive sincerity – no, he wouldn't have wanted Ruth to leave. Not even for his funeral.

'Jude?'

'Sworn to secrecy.'

No wonder the lad had seemed withdrawn! And – a huge big massive clue, Walmsley – no wonder Ruth hadn't called Barts to check on hubby's progress.

'So much for Nick's banter about a married woman. When we – oh, never mind. I still wish you'd told me.'

Her eyes took on that dangerous twinkle again.

'Nick happened to mention a woman called Marie. Does that ring any bells?'

'Current girlfriend, currently beyond the pale, beyond the cordon, beyond my ken.'

She reached up to put her arms around my neck, having to tiptoe to manage it, and gave me a long, hard kiss.

'You're a very sweet young man, John, even if you are a cold-blooded killer. You saved my life last night, which I won't forget. You've helped to keep me in one piece mentally over a very stressful time, and made me feel like a woman for the first time in years. However!'

There's always a however. If there's a woman, there's a however.

'I don't think there's a future for a relationship between the two of us. Not seriously, anyway. You have Marie to consider, and you don't really want to be tied down with a woman ten years your senior.'

'You flatter me, and you've been a woman all this time, proven not the least by your massive flirting.'

She gave me a saucy wink.

'The Natural History Museum and I will always welcome you with open arms, John. If you happen to be passing there, do drop in. I mean that. If I find you've been nearby and not visited, I will be offended.'

I wrote down the ultimatum on an invisible notebook with an invisible pen.

'Must – visit – Doctor – Horny – Kelly,' then added 'So named after dinosaurs of the Styracosauridae,' to avoid being hit.

She sighed again.

'Now, I need to get all our stuff packed away. And to sort out Henry's funeral arrangements.'

Pierce, hitherto diplomatically silent in the corner, intervened.

'Sir! Shall I get the duty team to help?'

'Get them on the case.' Internally I groaned in anguish – one of the UNIT squaddies had heard and seen Ruth's emotional goodbye to me, so it would be over the whole organisation within thirty minutes.

'She flirted with you because she likes big men, Mister Walmsley,' whispered Jude as he carried boxes past me.

If the dinosaurs had gone, and the crisis was over, the whole emergency hadn't quite run down. We still had to get the population of London back into London. Ruth and Jude went back to the Natural History Museum, with Three Section to help with all the information they'd acquired. The makeshift HQ at Kensington began to get dismantled and shipped down to the garage ready for transport.

I had anticipated a return of looters to the capital in the aftermath of the dinos vanishing. No such thing happened. A few "noisy" gangs were encountered, and scattered.

Whilst taking down maps and charts of diesel consumption in my office, Corporal Timms shepherded in a policeman and an NCO from the regulars. The soldier deferred to the police officer.

'Sergeant Bishop, sir, of the Met. We managed to get an identification on that looter you shot dead, sir.'

Stolid demeanour, Walmsley. Stiff upper lip.

'Oh really? And who was he?'

'Cathal Monaghan, sir. Known gangster. Fond of drugs and underage girls. String of convictions for armed robbery, assault, burglary, possession of controlled substances. What's more - ' and he glanced at the NCO ' – his description fits that of the man who shot dead one of the army chaps in North London. The girl you rescued was Angelina Warton, one of three student nurses who stayed behind to help with emergencies. She lived with them in a flat that got broken into. No sign of the other two yet. Just thought you might like to know.'

He left. The NCO produced a carton of 200 cigarettes and a bottle of Jack Daniels from a kitbag.

'Sur,' he began, in a thick Scottish brogue that made Nick Munroe sound like James Mason. 'The platoon had a whip-round when they found out who killed the killer.'

'The ki – oh, I see! Thanks, Corporal. Thank you. Thank you.' So the regulars decided that Monaghan had killed their colleague, and since I had killed Monaghan –

He saluted smartly.

'Oh, before you go, Corporal, there were two men arrested and detained from the same gang as Monaghan. Do you know what happened to them?'

'If they're the ones I'm thinking of, sur, then they were beaten to death in the Det Camp on their first day. Sir!' and he left.

Hmm. Vengeance may be the Lord's but we Hom Sap also have dibs on it.

Private Crooke appreciated the cigarettes, since I don't smoke. I dropped in on him at Barts whilst en route to Stoke Newington, where his bed was surrounded by other off-duty squaddies, and a couple who ought to be on-duty.

'As you were, at ease, at ease. Crooke, you lazy rascal, here's a package of something that fell off a passing lorry. Any idea when you get out?'

'Not long, sir. Ask the matron.'

Matron was a tall, grey-haired, no-nonsense woman who swept up to Crooke's bed and shooe'd the squaddies away effortlessly.

'What do you want?' she asked me, brusquely, very brusquely, but with a Wigan accent.

'Well, I was wondering when Private Crooke here, injured in the line of duty rescuing Student Nurse Angelina Warton, would be fit for duty.' I laid on the Wigan accent myself. Matron drew me off to one side.

'He helped to rescue Angelina? I didn't realise! I'm so sorry, Mister –'

'Walmsley.'

'Mister Walmsley! Allow me.'

She strode into the middle of the ward and made a little speech to the staff, patients and visitors about the bravery of Private Crooke, and the rescue of Angelina Warton. Crooke told us later that he needed to beat the nurses off with a dirty stick wrapped in barbed wire, one in each hand. Into each life a little sunlight I love to bring …

I arrived at Stoke Newington to deliver endless typed reports on contact patrols, observation patrols, dinosaurs observed, locations damaged or destroyed by dinosaur action, looters apprehended, rounds fired, gallons of diesel expended, materials or property taken into protective custody, et bloody cetera.

The Doctor was there, as his TARDIS had been transported hither from landing in Hyde Park. I deliberately hunted him down, to discover him expounding on pollution to a slim brunette in brown jacket and trousers.

'Miss,' I briefly acknowledged her. 'Doctor – I've been at the edge of things these past few weeks. Is it true about General Finch? And Sir Charles disappearing?'

The Doctor gave me a wry smile and pursed his lips.

'True? That Sergeant Benton knocked him unconscious? Oh yes.'

The young lady laughed at my gobsmacked expression. A Sergeant decking a general and not being court-martialled for it!

'As for Sir Charles, he hasn't gone far. Not geographically, anyway. In terms of time, however, I would say he is at least sixty million years adrift with his colleague and fellow conspirator, Whittaker.'

Having heard that, I tracked down Sergeant Benton, who was in the back of a Landrover, giving a lecture to assorted NCOs and troopers.

'Oh – sir!' he said, trying to salute.

'Don't give me that, Benton!' I snapped back. 'I believe you gave Finchy a little five-knuckled present to remember UNIT by.'

'Yes sir,' he replied, in a totally neutral tone.

'Well, then please accept this bottle of Jack Daniels as a token of Kensington Office's esteem.'

His face broke into a satisfied grin and I left him and the lecture party to christen the bottle.

It took me a couple of days to put the jigsaw pieces together as UNIT moved out of London and the civvies moved back in. Some information came from the Brig, some from the Doctor and most of the rest from reports written. It all made for a most fantastical scheme, but it nearly came off. In which case nobody would have survived to read or write this.

Sir Charles Grover seems to have been the prime mover. He found out about a scientist called Whittaker, who conducted time-travel research. Where General Henry Wilson Finch came into the picture isn't clear – he lied, denied and cried in equal amounts at his court martial before beginning a fifty year sentence. I think he wanted to be firstly, alive, and secondly, a big fish in a small pond. Grover and Whittaker conspired to create a crisis in London by bringing dinosaurs onto the streets, causing an evacuation, from their base in a Cold War subterranean bunker. Finchy helped them intensify the crisis. Whittaker's big plan was to reverse time across the whole of planet Earth, removing all human beings and all trace of their presence, five billion permanent goodnights. The idea was to then have a corps of ecologically-minded volunteers emerge from hibernation in a fake space-flight to begin life anew on what they would be told was a new world – Proxima Centauri or the like. Somewhere along the line Mike Yates had joined them; given his involvement in Operation Paris – the Llanfairfach giant maggots and mad computer case – the anti-pollution aspect of Grover's "Operation Golden Age" might have appealed to him.

Yates got off lightly. According to Butler – Whittaker's chief minion – and Finchy, Yates had been quite a pain in the arse about the Doctor, forbidding any fatal action being taken against him, threatening to expose the whole scheme if anyone tried to kill the Doctor. This may have counted in Yates' favour, as he got a prolonged spell of sick leave and was able to resign his commission instead of being handed fifty years. Selfishly, I was glad of this, as he had cause to come after me for brewing up his tank.

Anyway, moving onto the looters, or lack of, the Brig told me that Prime Minister Wilson had gotten fed up with being criticised in the press – what there was of it that could still print without Fleet Street – about looting. He'd loosed the Special Air Service on them.

Not many people know about the SAS. I'd heard of them in Ulster, and they do general creeping-peeping, sneaking-around-with-guns-type work. Very secretive, and not people to get on the wrong side of. They set up ambushes, stalked looters, established sniper hides and generally got pro-active. Eighteen dead looters and twenty seven locked up in the space of a day put the mockers on looting expeditions.

The Doctor, when bearded in his lair months later, proved to be surprisingly sympathetic to the plotters in Operation Golden Age. I'd come to get MOT and DVLA certifications for his delta jet-plane-car-hovercraft, a dismal prospect. He wasn't fond of authority, and less so of authority seeking signed paperwork. I made a crack about monsters and dinosaurs and Operation Golden Age.

'Right idea, wrong method,' he summed it up. 'John, this world ought to be about Need, not Greed. What was the title of that book Grover wrote – oh, yes – "Last Chance for Man". Sincere but misguided.'

"Need not Greed". That sounded almost Communist, but given our shared experience of the Soviet Union, I didn't dare say so.

Oh, there were still more twists in the tail. When the entire temporary HQ at Kensington Office had been moved out and into boxes, there remained myself, Nick, Swanepoel and Lieutenants Eden and Spofforth. We'd be staying there until the normal office staff turned up for work in the morning, to ensure no looters removed the building.

Nick's pater had kindly sent a bottle of twenty-year old malt to us, alongside the crate of beer that the squaddies had left behind upstairs, the bottle of cooking sherry Swanepoel discovered in the kitchen and two bottles of vodka found in the "Eastern European Dead File" cabinet's bottom drawer.

'A toast to Mister Swanepoel, who probably saved my life,' I began. Bottom's up.

'Yes, for an evil apartheidt swine, you're not so bad,' declared Lieutenant Eden at full volume.

Dead silence

'You know, Lieutenant Eden, I like your ingenuousness,' I began. 'And most especially the way you manage to fit both feet into your mouth at the same time. We have managed to maintain relations with Mister Swanepoel by studiously avoiding all mention of politics. Until now.'

Swanepoel sniggered at Eden's embarassment.

'Don't worry, man. I don't take it personal. In fact, I was thinking my previous opinions ebout Brits were wide of the mark. You've all been very accomodating.'

'Dinosaur invasion tends to do that,' muttered Spofforth.

Swanepoel nodded, enjoying himself.

'Don't forget you've had religious apartheid in Northern Ireland for quite a few centuries, eh man?'

'Hopefully the politicoes can get that sorted before they all kill each other,' I said, a little gloomily.

'Do you really hate all black people?' blurted Eden. Patently this boy could not keep brain and mouth in gear at the same time!

Swanepoel waved me down when I began to stand up to explain to Lieutenant Eden.

'I don't especially like kaffirs, no, but I don't hate them, either. What I dislike are the Communists. Blame the Russians for stirring up trouble.'

I shook my head.

'Hey now, I've met lots of Russians. Most are simply ordinary people trying to make a living. There are a few who would slit their own throat if the local Soviet said so, but they're in a minority. Don't confuse a political system with a people.'

'My point exactly,' added Swanepoel.

'It is immoral and impolite to discriminate on the grounds of race,' I added, knocking back a treble whisky. 'Except for Yorkshiremen. You can't discriminate enough against them. In particular the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.'

Swanepoel looked at me curiously whilst reaching for the water.

'Why is that?'

'Rugby!' I exlaimed. 'The KOYLI captain took great care in stamping on my head when the scrum collapsed.'

Nick made a face.

'How ghastly. I'm glad I stuck to cricket.'

'Oh, don't worry, he went home with less teeth than he arrived with.'

Eden went to put a new record on the stereo, which was now officially part of UNIT equipment. Nick had gone to see the manager of Dixons; the poor chap imagined all his stock had been looted, and was so grateful at getting it back he willingly "donated" the stereos and tellies. We still hadn't returned the records to the library. Scheduled for later that afternoon.

The music went through my head like a rocket.

'Hey! That's brilliant! What is it?'

Eden exchanged looks with Nick, who guffawed out loud, then held up the album cover.

Bloody lefty library record selectors. It was "The Red Army Choir"