Chapter 7
George Cook sighed. Dropping his copy of The Times into his lap, he out of the window. For the past twenty-five years he'd endured the daily commute from Pangbourne into Waterloo and thence to The City. Without looking, he could tell where he was, just from the motion of the carriage. The squealing of the brakes against the steel wheels heralded the approach to another station. Longcross Halt, he noted idly.
Usually, engrossed in the crossword, he would hardly have noticed the interruption to the journey. Today, however, he not only noticed the small wooden shelter that was the entirety of the station building, but the tall fence, surmounted by barbed wire that stood behind it.
Beyond the fence, a large collection of buildings was visible; not just offices, but also much larger, windowless structures. Steam billowed from a multitude of pipes and ducts.
Over the noise of the vacuum pump recharging the train's brake gear, Cook thought he could hear the sound of an engine starting. The throaty roar came from no ordinary car, he was sure of that. But what could it be?
The pumping stopped. The train jerked and pulled away from the mysterious site.
Cook made a mental note to look on the map when he got home. He couldn't know, that morning, that his search would be in vain; maps available to the general public merely showed an area of heath. The cartographers, employed as they were by Ordnance Survey, a part of the Ministry of Defence had, in the interests of security, only included this site on 'Official' maps.
Inside the site, the Military Vehicle Experimental Establishment, Chertsey; known to the staff who worked there as 'Meevee'; another day's work had just begun. The Chieftain tank, whose engine the bemused Arthur Cook had heard earlier, pulled out from its shed and drove out towards the test track, half a mile away.
Inside one of the office buildings, a telephone rang.
Miss Woods, the Superintendent's secretary picked up the receiver and listened for a moment.
"Thank you." She said before replacing the receiver. She pressed the intercom button.
"Doctor Cardwell? Your visitor has arrived"
"Thank you" came the reply from the loudspeaker.
A moment later, the door to the Superintendent's office opened. Doctor David Cardwell, Superintendent of the establishment, bustled out of the office.
"I'm just going down to meet our visitor", he informed her. "Can you arrange for some tea, please?"
"Certainly" she smiled as the door closed behind him.
The official limousine swept up to the Main Gate as Doctor Cardwell left the building.
He stepped forward as the driver opened the rear door.
The passenger stepped from the car. Dr Cardwell was surprised to see a dark blue, rather than khaki, uniform, then gathered himself as he recognised the American Eagle on the visitor's lapel.
"Colonel Straker? Welcome to the Military Vehicle Experimental Establishment. I'm Dr Cardwell, the Superintendent. Would you care to follow me, please?"
Arnold Hobbs, Lodge keeper at Sandringham for over forty years, had never seen anything like it. What had started out as just another routine day had just turned into anything but. The yells of the two boys had drawn him here
"Oh, Bloody 'Ell", he muttered as he gazed at the lifeless form.
"I fink it's a' astronaut." offered Andrew
"Don't be so bloody daft," snapped Hobbs. Whoever the figure had been was irrelevant. What it was now was a Problem.
"I think you two had better come along o' me," Hobbs decided 'An' if you don't mind, I'll take that". He snatched at the glittering weapon that Simon still held.
A mistake; with a cough, the weapon fired. Hobbs' face barely registered surprise before he slumped, lifeless, to the ground; a huge gaping hole in his chest.
The boys ran.
Cardwell looked at the list that Straker had given him. He looked up; "This is quite a list, Colonel; Air portable, high manoeuvrability, amphibious, capable of transporting troops in platoon strength and heavily armed. If you want amphibious capability, let alone air portability, heavy armour's not a viable option."
"Are you saying you can't help?" asked Straker.
"Not at all," replied Cardwell, "But this list looks as if it's been drawn up by someone who's decided he wants a vehicle to cope with a military threat but is unclear on its exact nature. Perhaps, if you could give me some idea of the nature of the threat…"
"I'm sorry, Doctor." Apart from a few people who knew just enough to do their jobs, no one but Henderson and Straker knew the whole story. If knowledge of the alien threat became widely known, the consequences could be disastrous:
University research, some years before, had been hurriedly abandoned; the test subjects, hypnotised and conditioned to believe that contact with extra-terrestrials had been made, had exhibited extreme psychotic reactions.
With hindsight, the results should have been predictable, bearing in mind Mankind's short but bloody history, filled with wars over seemingly minor differences between nations. Those wars had been waged between members of the same species.
It was clear that widespread panic and chaos would follow disclosure of a real alien threat.
Straker and Henderson had agreed from the outset that no one, but no one could know. It was the safest way – the only way.
Cardwell continued: "In many respects, it seems that what you're looking for is a cross between a Scorpion and a Stolly."
"Stolly?"
"I'm sorry, Alvis Stalwart"
Noticing Straker's blank look, Cardwell stood up; "Perhaps it would be easier if I showed you."
"Perhaps it would." Replied Straker.
Twenty minutes later, wearing olive drab boiler suits over their clothes, the two men entered one of the enormous sheds at the rear of the site.
On the way, Cardwell pointed out an FV101 'Scorpion' tracked reconnaissance vehicle as it headed towards the test track. Small and light, the air-portable tracked vehicle had just recently entered service with the British Army and RAF Regiment. Powered by a Jaguar V-12 engine, it had proved capable of speeds of up to seventy miles per hour on good roads. The local Constabulary had politely asked that the feat never be repeated on the nearby dual carriageway on account of its unsettling effect on other motorists.
Straker had been suitably impressed. Speed of deployment, although not a primary concern, was a factor to be considered. The main doors were open and the sound of a large engine, ticking over, came from within. Cardwell ushered his guest inside.
The Alvis FV622 High Mobility Load Carrier, known as Stalwart or more affectionately as the 'Stolly', was an ungainly looking beast. A green-painted angular body perched atop a six-wheeled chassis, with water jet propulsion units behind the rear axle; it could quite clearly go more-or less anywhere. The large eye-like windows gave it an almost insect-like quality.
"The British Army use them for carrying ammunition and stores." Explained Cardwell, climbing the rungs to the roof and pulling open the hatch. He gestured for Straker to climb aboard. Straker clambered up and slid into the centre seat that had been retrofitted some time after the vehicle had been built, next to a Staff Sergeant who mas sitting at the controls. In addition to the conventional steering wheel, there seemed to be a number of levers. Straker hazarded a guess at gear stick and handbrake. But the others?
Cardwell climbed aboard and slammed the hatch shut. "Right Staff, Away you go."
"Sir!" The NCO replied, letting out the clutch. With a roar from the six and a half litre Rolls-Royce engine, a cloud of blue smoke belched from the exhaust stack as the Stalwart inched out of the shed and headed towards the test track, on the other side of the main road.
The brass plate was highly polished as always:
Gp. Capt. R M Smallwood DSO, DFC
STATION COMMANDER
Haysey steeled herself and knocked on the door.
"Come In"
She shoved the door open and wheeled her chair into the room.
The Officer looked up, smiled and stood. "Good Afternoon, Miss Haysey. What can I do for you today? "
"We've lost some documents, sir."
Smallwood frowned. "Oh? Do you want to tell me about it?
The ambulance crew lifted the blanket-covered form and slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance.
It was clear that they had arrived too late for Arnold Hobbs, but they would still have to transport him to hospital for a doctor to issue a death certificate. Then there was the question of the other figure, lying on the other stretcher. He looked like a biker, but where was the motorcycle?
This was a question that also crossed the mind of Superintendent Hargreaves, surveying the scene from a mobile command post.
As soon as the emergency call had come from Sandringham, the well-rehearsed procedures were activated; an armed cordon now surrounded the house with more officers combing the woods. A WPC was currently trying to establish from two hysterical boys exactly what had happened. Another had been despatched to their school to advise the headmaster of the whereabouts of his two errant pupils and establish the whereabouts of the boys' parents.
Ambulances had been called for the casualties.
Hargreaves looked at the alien gun, now bagged up and sealed, on the desk in front of him. He'd seen many firearms in his time, from sawn-off shotguns to enormous weapons from the Boer War, but none of them looked like this. The procedure for dealing with strange weapons was clear; he reached for the directory on the shelf, thumbed through, checked the number, picked up the telephone receiver and began to dial.
Outside, the driver secured the rear doors of the Bedford ambulance, walked round to the cab and climbed in.
The big engine roared into life and the vehicle surged forward. Pausing for a moment at the junction, the ambulance turned towards Kings Lynn.
Smallwood rubbed his chin. "It looks to me as if you've done all you can to find the file. All you can do now is raise a Missing Document report to be circulated with the Office Circulars." I'd be more concerned if it was an active file but seeing as it's a retired officer's, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
"Right you are sir"
Somewhat shakily, Straker climbed down from the Stalwart, now heavily encrusted with mud, the result of forty minutes on the vehicle test track. Only a small part was concrete road; the rest was an exotic mix of sand tracks, trenches, hills, water obstacles and a seemingly endless supply of mud. The test track had been carefully designed to simulate virtually any condition that a military vehicle would be likely to encounter anywhere in the world.
Straker had had to close his eyes more than once when a seemingly vertical hill they were climbing suddenly dropped away to a near precipice. Unfazed, Sergeant Adams had put the Stalwart through its paces, handling the vehicle in ways that the designers could never have imagined.
Dr Cardwell was still grinning; he liked nothing more than a trip round the track.
"Well, Colonel, remarkable beast isn't she?"
"I can truthfully say I've never ridden anything like it." Replied Straker, stepping down to the ground. 'And probably never would again if he had any say in the matter', thought Straker. His stomach was still lurching. He wasn't at all sure that accepting Dr Cardwell's invitation to lunch had been such a wise move.
As Cardwell led him away toward the Visitors' Dining Room he looked back at the vehicle. It was uncomfortable but…"Perhaps" he thought, narrowing his eyes, imagining what might be...
"Yes, Perhaps"
"It's a long story," Explained Ford "It all started about 5 years ago. I was stationed up at Fylingdales, babysitting the Americans. Anyway, one evening, we had a contact on the radar. As the Duty Officer, I had to report it. A couple of Lightnings were scrambled from Binbrook but they couldn't acquire visual contact. We realised that the object was travelling at something in excess of Mach 6. The kit was still being tested so something that small, travelling that fast had to be some sort of problem with the equipment"
"Obviously"
"Except that the contact didn't fade out as the ghosts usually do but headed straight in from the North East towards us. As soon as it was within visual range, I grabbed some binos to see if I could spot it."
"So what was it?"
"If you'd asked me then, I'd have said 'No Idea' but now I'd recognise it anywhere; three nights ago, its twin flew over my house for the second time. Last night, Lieutenant Waterman and I battled against the occupants of an identical craft." Ford took a deep breath; the memory still burned red-raw "Occupants who butchered my wife."