Tamsin Beech Ch. 10: Soteria

But just as the gunship passed low over the island's causeway, she noticed a burst of gunfire erupting from one of the T-14s that had somehow become stranded in deep mud over on Beal Sands to the south. The Kamov abruptly jolted sideways and dropped in a wild spin with dense black smoke pouring from its engine vents.

"Fr-fraser's people must have cap-captured one of the tanks!" Tamsin cried, almost laughing with relief. The helicopter slammed into the causeway and exploded in a billowing orange fireball, effectively blocking the road.

She shielded her eyes as a second T-14 blocking the mainland end of the causeway fired back at the stranded tank out on the flats. The resulting explosion drowned out even the noise of the debris storm as all the ordnance onboard went up, "Shit McT. G-guess we won't be getting any more help."

But the debris storm had provided them with very effective cover. Apart from the dead crew of the crashed Kamov, no-one even knew they were on the island. McTavish dragged her along towards the island's dunes as the smoke from both the burning helicopter and T-14 were whipped away by the screeching wind. They'd set out from the mainland with a hundred Reekie warriors. Tamsin guessed there were only half that number remaining.

. . .

The flight deck of the North Korean aircraft carrier Baekdusan had been evacuated of all personnel minutes before the debris storm hit. Millions of razor sharp shards of metal, glass and timber forming a lethal monsoon that cracked windows, scoured bulkheads and forced the entire crew to take cover behind sealed hatches.

On the ship's bridge, at the very top of its massive control tower, Volk and Ludmila Mudak flanked by six of the presidential bodyguard watched the carrier's commanding officer and bridge crew. The other Spetsnaz had strategically deployed to the ship's operations room and engine room deep within the bowels of the ship. It had been a tense few minutes as the Russians had charged onto the distrustful North Koreans' flagship, but without a single shot being fired they'd assumed control.

"You do realise this is for the good of the entire Coalition, captain?" in the dim red emergency lighting, Volk regarded the North Korean intently. He was short, as so many of them were, stern looking with thick, bushy eyebrows under a mop of greying hair. Captain Sogjoe Geomi.

"You plan to use our nuclear weapons against Lindisfarne?" asked the captain tightly, with a bemused expression. He was most certainly not happy relinquishing command to some Russian.

Volk considered for a moment. The less the North Koreans knew about Soteria the better. There might even come a day when the Coalition could find a way of bypassing the security and make use of it, "There are ... too many of our own brave troops there at the moment. If we deploy a nuclear weapon it won't be against Lindisfarne, but the home of the Reekie creatures itself - Edinburgh."

Captain Geomi nodded, lounging back in his captain's chair. He wasn't at all happy with Volk storming on board with his mistress and two dozen heavily armed bodyguards. But at the end of the day they were supposed to be allies. Outside, on the Baekdusan's flight deck, thirty five massive Russian built MZKT-79221 missile transporter trucks sat. Lashed firmly to the ship in neat rows since leaving North Korea, each carried a Topol M intercontinental ballistic missile, awaiting a target and an authorisation code to launch.

But, for the moment anyway, that was exactly where they were going to stay. Beyond the wide bridge windows the debris storm engulfed the fleet, howling winds blasting spinning debris past at incredible speeds.

It would pass, but was something else Volk hadn't counted on. The plan had been to assassinate the president and spend the day discussing the way ahead for the Coalition with the senior staff. He'd not counted on there being another assassin, or even considered the Reekies might launch a major offensive.

"Supreme Marshal Volk sir," whispered one of his Spetsnaz officers - a scarred old Major called Rosomakha. The North Koreans didn't need to know he'd been in contact with the Lenin, "our experts have analysed the Reekies' attack. There IS a danger. If this is a resistance led operation and they somehow manage to access the Soteria bunker ..."

Volk gazed out of the window at the swirling maelstrom of the storm, deep in thought, "You're right. They wouldn't go to all the trouble of attacking the garrison if they didn't have a plan," he turned to Rosomakha, "order one of our guided missile destroyers - perhaps the Bezuprechny, to target Lindisfarne."

"Sir?"

Volk recalled his own words from minutes before, about there being too many of their own troops on the island, "But don't fire until I give the order."

. . .

Thirty minutes later on Lindisfarne, Tamsin, McTavish and what remained of their Reekies hunkered down in a grey drizzle at the very centre of the island. An area once known as the Stank, they hid amid the wreckage of a crashed light aircraft almost obscured by forty year's worth of brambles and ivy, surveying the castle to the south. Apart from a couple of hastily constructed watchtowers and a fortified roadblock, they'd encountered no real resistance. She guessed Volk's main force would be waiting for them in the village, blocking the most obvious way to the castle itself.

"Guess this is where we split up," Tamsin whispered. To the west, sporadic gunfire could still be heard from the direction of Beal Sands as Fraser's people continued to engage the Coalition. While to the east, the horizon had taken on an orange glow as the sun prepared to make an appearance. The debris storm had weakened somewhat before eventually moving away to the south and Bamburgh.

McTavish grunted, looking around at his fellow Reekies.

"Remember what we discussed," said Tamsin, "Volk's elite will be guarding the approach to the western side of the castle. Spetsnaz. DON'T take them head on," she drew out the Very pistol and slotted the green flare into the wide muzzle, "you'll be cut to pieces. We need time to get inside the Soteria bunker and do what we need to do. Just buy us time."

McTavish nodded, "Tha e air a bhith na urram."

Tamsin grinned, "I've no idea wh-what you just said McT. B-but don't get all serious on me, my friend. It's not as if we're not going to see each other again."

McTavish clasped her numb fingers, gave a curt nod, then crept away into the undergrowth, whistling for the other Reekies to follow.

Tamsin blew out her breath. This was it. She had five of Fraser's people to help get them into the castle while McTavish kept the island's garrison busy - hopefully it would be enough. It was time to invite the final piece of the puzzle ...

POOM!

The green flare shot skyward, high above the island like a tiny but defiantly bright spark of hope.

. . .

Onboard the Kerrera II, Ross Beech steadied the binoculars against the wheelhouse's peeling window frame, trying to make out details of what was happening to the west. Since dropping anchor a mile offshore from Lindisfarne, they'd witnessed a violent debris storm sweep across the island and a number of explosions. From what, they had no way of knowing.

"Surely we should've heard something by now," Merida said, uneasily.

Ross shook his head, "I don't know Meri. Tamz said sunrise. She didn't give a specific time. How's Ham?"

What a cruel twist of fate that an old warrior like Hamnavoe should succumb not to wounds sustained in some glorious battle, but to something as insidious and random as cancer. Merida shook her head solemnly, "Between you and me I honestly don't think he'd survive the trip ashore."

Ross set the binoculars down, "So we'll have come all this way for nothing. If we can't access the bunker we're well and truly fucked. Once Zakhvatchikov realises the island's under attack he'll send ships."

Merida slipped an arm around her husband's waist and peered out through the grimy glass, "Ross? That's our daughter out there. If there's a way to make this right, she'll find it. Now, go make sure Jess and Phoebe are okay and I'll ..."

"You'll what?"

Merida pointed wordlessly at the grey overcast sky directly above the island. To where a light, like a tiny green star slowly floated down, becoming gradually dimmer and dimmer as it descended.

Ross hugged her tightly against him, "That's the signal. She's done it. She's fucking done it! Warn Jess. I'll go launch the dinghy."

PART TWO: REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

In Greek mythology, Soteria had been the goddess or spirit of safety and salvation, deliverance, and preservation from harm. She knew because she'd looked it up in a battered encyclopedia of mythology while in Kirkwall. As she limped through knee high brush closer to their goal, Tamsin Beech wondered if it might be a suitable time to pray for just a little of that protection for herself.

If she was successful then perhaps one day people might even tell stories about her ...

Lindisfarne Castle was exactly as she remembered it. The squat, but unimposing castle perched on its rocky outcrop at the island's south east corner like a limpet stranded at low tide. Accessible only by a long sloping ramp and sturdy gates it would have been virtually impregnable to the warmongers of the time. Each room cosy and small, rather than grand and imposing. The low stone ceilings and feet thick walls more than a match for anything the North Sea or a Northumbrian winter could throw at them. It had even survived Thanatos.

Lantern light flickered in many of the old leaded windows and she could clearly see sentries clustered at the Upper Battery wall above watching the ongoing battle to the west.

The flagpole situated outside Volk's office was curiously empty which usually denoted his absence from the island. But perhaps the Supreme Marshal's standard had simply been removed to protect it from the raging debris storm. Gunfire and a panicked scream sounded from the village a little way off. McTavish and his Reekies had apparently engaged the enemy.

Tamsin motioned silently to Kyleakin, a wiry Reekie woman McTavish had introduced as one of their best climbers. She indicated the almost sheer wall she'd years before clambered down with Craster to make their escape, "Climb up onto the balcony there and you can get in through the windows of the north bedrooms. Take out any soldiers, quietly. But if you find Volk ... I want him alive."

Kyleakin nodded, picking something unidentifiable from between her filed teeth with a grimy fingernail. Tamsin wondered queazily if the Reekie woman had been involved in her ceremony back in Edinburgh.

"What'll you be doin'? Ye cannae climb with yer knackered leg," Kyleakin asked.

Tamsin drew one of her Grach handguns and adjusted the beret of her stolen uniform, "I ... will be going in the front door."

. . .

Ruaridh McTavish and the forty odd Reekies with him spread out and advanced south into Lindisfarne's once picturesque village. The debris storm had moved on but with the tide out and causeway now uncovered, there would be other dangers along soon enough. The Coalition would guess some of them had made it across and the burning wreck of one of Zakhvatchikov's precious Kamovs couldn't block the road for long.

Over the course of their occupation, the Coalition troops had effectively closed off several of the backstreets with burnt out vehicles, telegraph poles and rubble - thus herding any would be attackers onto the main thoroughfares. But they hadn't counted on an attack by Reekies. McTavish and his people swarmed nimbly and quietly up the sides of buildings, clambering onto patched rooftops and bypassing the roadblocks entirely.

One by one, individual Spetsnaz sentries not watching the battle unfold over on the mainland were eliminated quickly from above, garroted or simply shot in the throat with arrows before they could raise the alarm.

But eventually, inevitably, the Reekies were spotted ...

"REEKIES! My nakhodimsya pod atakoy!" shouted a Coalition sniper wearing NVGs, hidden on the roof of what had once been the Lindisfarne Mead shop.

BLAM!

The warrior next to McTavish was thrown back off the roof by the impact of a bullet to the head. An enemy using night vision goggles was another added complication.

TAKATAKATAK!

Then all hell broke loose. Gunfire seemed to erupt from several directions at once, wildly aimed rounds sending chips of tile and masonry flying as a quarter of McTavish's force were wiped out in an instant. Woad painted Reekie bodies - now decorated blue and red, slumped down from the rooftops as the survivors desperately backtracked to find cover.

. . .

Trying to disguise her limp as best she could, Tamsin marched boldly past the island's old lime kilns and up Lindisfarne Castle's cobbled entry ramp. The thick oaken outer door - the only entrance, would be sealed shut while the island was under attack. She glanced behind her once, at the reassuring sight of the Kerrera II's tiny black inflatable nearing the shore no more than a hundred yards away at Castle Point.

They'd spotted the flare. So far so good.

She'd had to eliminate one sentry on her way around the eastern side of the castle, stabbed in the neck with her Royal Marines Commando knife and quietly lowered to the ground.

Tamsin tugged her Coalition uniform beret down to help conceal her Reekie woad and red hair. Even tied up in a bun the colour was a dead giveaway but the early morning light could sometimes play tricks on the eyes. She hoped. Holding one of her Grachs concealed behind her back, she hammered on the door with her left fist, "OTKROYTE TAM!"

Silence. Then another burst of gunfire echoed from the direction of the village half a mile around the harbour to the west. A curlew glanced her way then returned to picking its way cautiously through the detritus washed up on the beach below.

Tamsin tried again, "OTKROYTE TAM!" Open up.

A head appeared over the parapet of the Upper Battery above her head, "Kto ty? Chto ty khochesh?"

Who was she and what did she want? Impertinent little shit. Trying to add as much authority as possible to her voice and hoping that her Russian pronunciation had improved somewhat, Tamsin turned slightly so that the Coalition corporal could more easily see her major's rank slides, "Ya, um ... Mayor Maskirovka. Otkroy dver."

If they didn't open the door to even a superior officer, she was going to have to rely on Kyleakin and the Reekies to clear the castle and let her in.

"U menya net polnomochiy Mayor," called the corporal, "prikazy Marshala Volk."

Great. Volk had told them to admit no-one.

In her peripheral vision, Tamsin could see Jessamy and Phoebe Beech dragging the inflatable up onto the shingle. She guessed her parents had stayed with the trawler in case they needed to make a quick getaway - no point in them all being in danger. She clenched her jaw, "Otkroyte etu dolbanuyu dver' SEYCHAS, Kapral."

Other figures appeared at the parapet, curious to see who was demanding entry with such a foul mouth.

"Mne nuzhno srochno svyazat'sya s Volk," Tamsin yelled. That should do it, she thought. Telling them she needed to contact Volk herself on the castle's shortwave might make them reconsider.

The corporal whispered to one of the others for a moment, then finally, "Minutku Mayor," and disappeared from view. Down on the beach beside the lime kilns, Jessamy and Phoebe were helping Hamnavoe from the dinghy. Tamsin couldn't tell whether he was even conscious but it was clear that in the four of five days since she'd seen him last, his condition has worsened.

But if the soldiers on the Upper Battery spotted them before she'd gained entry they'd be sitting ducks. As far as plans went, theirs had more holes than a collander.

With a scraping of enormous iron bolts being drawn back, the thick oaken door leading into the castle's Lower Battery eventually opened. The corporal stood waiting expectantly just inside, flanked by two others carrying AKs, "Kak vas snova zvali, Mayor?"

Tamsin smiled, pulling off her beret to reveal herself, "My name? I'll tell you my name ..."

"Zakhvatchikov ..." the corporal's eyes went wide as Tamsin whipped out the Grach from behind her back.

BLAM! BLAM-BLAM!

The corporal and the private to his left collapsed to the damp flagstones, dead. Tamsin's third shot however had gone wide. The remaining Coalition soldier raised his Kalashnikov ...

... then gasped in astonishment as an axe thudded into the side of his head. He too slumped to the ground at Tamsin's feet - a look of stunned surprise frozen on his angular features. Kyleakin and a couple of her Reekies stepped into view from the castle's entrance hall.

Tamsin nodded her appreciation, not for the first time grateful that she and the Reekies were on the same side, "Any resistance? Any sign of Volk?"

Kyleakin shook her head and bent to retrieve her throwing axe, "No sign. All dealt wi'. Castle's yers."

Damn it, thought Tamsin.

"For fuck's sake!" exclaimed a voice from the ramp outside, "didn't you leave any for us?"

Tamsin turned to find her Aunt Jessamy standing in the gateway, brandishing an antique SA80, "Hah! Glad you could make it Aunt Jess."

Jessamy clapped a hand on Tamsin's shoulder and pulled her in for a hug, "Good to see you Tamz. You're ... blue."

"I'm officially a Reekie now."

"No shit. Listen, Pheebs is with Hamnavoe. He's not looking good ... so I think we need to get this thing done as soon as."

Tamsin nodded. She had to keep reminding herself that Hamnavoe wasn't just a means of getting inside the bunker. He was her uncle. And more importantly Jessamy Beech's husband. Putting the old man through all this must surely be a hellish experience for her, "This is Kyleakin. Kyleakin, Jessamy Beech."

"Where's my good friend McTavish?" asked Jessamy peering around.

"Mopping up in the village," Tamsin answered, "keeping Volk's Spetsnaz off our backs. Did you ... find any sign of Ada at Fort George?"

Jessamy chewed her lip, "There were definitely kids there once. Phoebe thinks her sister's ... most probably dead. But if not ... we, uh ... think the Coalition ..."

"What?" Tamsin urged.

"The Coalition ... may have recruited them ..."

Before Tamsin could respond, Kyleakin pushed urgently between them, "Ye better fuckin' hurry up. There's a Russian tank an' a shitload o' soldiers comin' this way across the causeway."

. . .

Onboard the Coalition guided missile destroyer Bezuprechny, a young weapons systems operator double checked the coordinates he'd been ordered to target with a warning shot. An area of waste ground just metres west of Lindisfarne Castle.

Why were they being told to target Coalition occupied territory? He had friends stationed on the island! Even the blast from a conventional weapon like the P-270 Mosquito anti-ship missile would be devastating.

He knew better than to question the captain's orders though. Especially when they'd just heard rumours from the Lenin that President Zakhvatchikov himself might be dead. He had a horrible feeling that the Coalition as he'd known it was over. Outside the sun was rising on the dawn of a new regime ...

. . .

It had taken a while to carry Hamnavoe up into the castle and down into the Ship Room. Bodies of around a dozen Coalition soldiers lay sprawled in the entry hall and gallery leading to it. Some half dressed, lying in pools of blood giving a coppery scent to the air, all despatched quietly and with the minimum of fuss by the Reekies. Tamsin was sure there'd be many others and tried to put what her allies might do to the bodies out of her mind.

If Supreme Marshal Volk wasn't in residence, the civilian staff from the island's village had thankfully been dismissed for the night. A small blessing.