OPERATION WRATH OF GOD, Chapter 11

Copyright © 2026 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.First published February 2026.The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible (WEB), which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm. Sometimes I paraphrase the Bible and when I do so, I reference the chapter and verse. Direct quotations from the WEB are indicated by quotation marks. English language Bibles are translated from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. I am no linguist, and I don’t know any linguists, so I have had to rely on others’ translations and romanizations of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Occasionally, I have examined the original Hebrew and Greek of the Bible, zeroing in on key words where the received English translation is debatable or misses the full meaning of the original. To clarify, the WEB refers to the Antichrist, the beasts, and the False Prophet, but makes no reference to any ‘Khan’ or ‘Lavani’, which are names for the Antichrist and the False Prophet given for the purposes of this book.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a therapist and nothing in this book should be considered medical advice. Nor should it be considered a substitute for diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments from qualified doctors. If you have symptoms, I recommend that you see a doctor to rule out anything serious and get proper care.

Chapter 11: Hostage Rescue

Watching on the Situation Room’s CCTV feed, Burrows saw the mob and the beasters shooting the RAF Police in the decontamination suite. They were then beaten to death. The second blast door was open, too. The mob was headed towards the dormitory. Looking at all the screens, Burrows estimated there were about sixty of them.

One of the Cyberspace Communications Specialists got on the radio to ask for reinforcements from Dalton Barracks.

‘Get the police, as well,’ said Bedfellow.

John had a decision to make. If he stayed here, they could seal the door and be safe until the cavalry came. But by the time reinforcements got here, all the hostages might be dead, and John doubted the police could handle this many armed assailants. He had to get out of here before the steel door to the Situation Room was sealed shut. Berry looked at John, clearly thinking along the same lines.

RAF Police Sergeant Theodore Longcot was a lean chap with a runner’s physique. He bolted first. Acting on instinct, John and Berry ran after him, along with some of the younger RAF officers and an RAF Police corporal, who had been present in the room to protect the base commander.

‘Where are you lot going?’ demanded Bedfellow. ‘We need to secure the Situation Room! Anyone who disobeys will be court martialled!’

Several officers stopped in their tracks. Only seven men defied him, including Burrows, Berry and Longcot.

‘Burrows, get back here! You’re a civilian, for Pete’s sake!’ bellowed Bedfellow.

‘I’m doing this for Pete’s sake!’ yelled Burrows, on the move. He kept running before any of the officers could catch up and restrain him. It helped that most of them were over fifty.

As Burrows hurtled down the corridor, he heard gunshots and screams. Women’s screams. Even through the thick concrete walls of the bunker, he heard them. There were only eight women in the bunker; one of them was his wife, another was his mother and most of them were in the dormitory. That meant the RAF sentry posted by the door to the barracks had been overwhelmed.

John was headed for the armoury. They needed weapons if they were to stand a chance against the armed mob. He had overtaken Longcot and was leading the charge. Because of God’s promises and scripture, he knew he would not die, and this emboldened him.

‘Burrows, stop! You’re not even armed! I’ll take point!’ cried Longcot.

Ahead of John was a long-haired man wearing a beige coat and tracksuit bottoms. He was covered in blood from the RAF Police corporal who lay dead at his feet. His pistol was rising to chest level. John swerved and turned into the hospital. The gunshots boomed in the confined space. The men behind him caught several bullets. The two RAF Policemen returned fire with their L85 rifles.

John heard some scratching and shuffling. Someone was going through the medical supply cupboards. The RAF Medical Officer lay dead on the floor. His uniform was covered in stab wounds. John peered around the partition and saw a heavyset balding bloke in his thirties. This man spun around and elbowed John in the nose. The pain was intense. His eyes watered, involuntarily. John reeled away, going with the blow, as he had been trained.

His assailant grabbed a surgical saw, still plugged in. The saw buzzed to life. He started flailing with the saw. John backpedalled, getting beyond the range of the cord. The man unplugged the surgical power tool and came at him with it. Instinctively, John ran away. The man chased him around the room. They had changed places. John grabbed a scalpel from the surgeon’s knife kit and turned to face his enemy. All he had to do was keep this nutter at bay until the armed RAF policemen came in.

The man’s eyes were bulging. He had the mark on his forehead, and a sore on his hand to go with it. He hopped around, pointing the saw at John. The beaster stabbed at him. Burrows dodged, but the blade nicked his elbow. Then the gunfire in the corridor stopped. Corporal Jenkins of the RAF Police stepped into the room with his rifle.

‘Drop the weapon and get down on the ground!’ he yelled, at top volume. The man lunged for John anyway. Jenkins shot him in the back. He dropped the saw and slumped forward, dead.

The others, including Berry, had filed into the room behind them.

‘We need more guns,’ said John.

‘Too bloody right, mate,’ said Jenkins.

‘It would be suicide to confront an armed mob without a weapon,’ said Berry. ‘But I’m uneasy about taking a civilian into combat. You can turn back now, if you want. I know the Situation Room door is shut, but you can wait in the corridor.’

‘I’m not a civilian. Not completely, anyway. The MOD Police gave me some basic firearms, counterintelligence and unarmed combat training.’ As a consultant analyst, this training wasn’t a job requirement, and was done at Burrows’ insistence. It was an option for non-operational personnel after a DI civilian contractor had his eyes gouged out by the beasters. John’s instructors thought he was immature, a nerdy Bond wannabe. But that training was coming in useful now.

‘How much training?’ asked Longcot.

‘Four weekends’, Burrows admitted, sheepishly.

Longcot rolled his eyes.

‘That’s good enough for me, sir. These lot haven’t had much more than that,’ Jenkins said, indicating the officers who were not in the RAF Police. ‘We need all the guns we can get.’

Barrington bristled at that, but said nothing.

John stepped out into the corridor. There was a small pile of corpses at the canteen end of the corridor. And Pilot Officer Jeff Hendred lay dead at the other end. He’d been shot in the firefight.

‘Poor Jeff,’ said Burrows. The door to the Situation Room was sealed shut behind them.

‘I see the brass has every confidence in us,’ John observed.

‘We’re on our own,’ said Berry. ‘Whatever happens, the keep must hold. It’s protocol.’

They came to the armoury without encountering further opposition. John took stock of their situation. It was him, Flight Lieutenant Berry, Pilot Officer Barrington, Flight Lieutenant Harry Dexter, Pilot Officer Penry, Corporal Jenkins and Sergeant Longcot. Seven men, against about sixty. Stiff odds, no matter how you looked at it.

But their families were in danger, with the exception of Longcot and Corporal Jenkins, who wanted revenge for the slaughter of their RAF Police mates. Flight Lieutenant Dexter, a husky chap with watery eyes and a bulbous nose, was the ranking officer, but Longcot had by far the most small arms combat experience.

With Longcot’s pass, they were given access to the armoury. There was a rack of ten assault rifles (L85’s) with affixed bayonets, ten Glock 17 pistols, ten helmets with night vision goggles, a box of ten frag grenades, ten suppressors, ten gas masks, ten batons, ten stun grenades (called flashbangs), and ten tear gas canisters for crowd control. There were also two plexiglass bulletproof riot shields.

‘Help yourselves lads – go for the assault rifles,’ said Barrington, largely for Burrows’ sake.

Burrows stared at the L85A2 in front of him, glistening in the fluorescent light. He faced another dilemma. ‘You shall not kill’– or ‘you shall not murder’ (Exodus 20:13)? ‘Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth’ (Matthew 5:5) – or ‘the wrath of God’ (Romans 1:18)? It depended on the context, Burrows knew, but above all, on the will of God.

‘Lord, may I take this weapon and if necessary, harm and kill in order to save my family from these idolaters, and thereby act in such a way that allows my promise, and yours, to be kept?’ he whispered.

Jenkins gave him a funny look and grabbed a couple of grenades from the box in front of him.

The answer came back strong and clear, a voice arising from the silent places of Burrows’ spirit.

‘Yes. If you do not kill them, I will, at Gehenna. The idolaters among them made their choice. The chaff is on the threshing floor, and the strong wind bloweth through the barn. I deliver these wretches unto your judgement.’

John grabbed the LA85A2. The rifle took the standardised 5.56x45mm NATO bullet. It was a bullpup, meaning the action and magazine were located behind the trigger. The weapon had the old SUSAT optical sight. The newer A3 model with the ACOG scope hadn’t made its way into the bunker arsenal. John donned Osprey body armour, a tactical vest, over his uniform. He stuffed four 30 round magazines and a 17 round pistol magazine into the pouches. Then John grabbed two flashbangs and a Glock-17 with holster, which he attached to his tactical vest. He also donned the helmet with NVG’s. Someone had left a watch behind on the bench. As an afterthought, Burrows grabbed it. Might be useful to keep track of the time today. All hell was breaking loose out in the hall. The shots were incredibly loud.

John prayed quietly, barely above a whisper, ‘Lord, I am no soldier. I’ve never fired a gun in anger before. But you are the source of all ability. With you, I do not need training. Give me the skill to defend your house from the adversary. The ability of a Tier 1 special forces soldier, since the saints are to be your special forces in the battle to come.’

‘Yahweh your God is he who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you,’[i] came the inner voice, strong and clear.

Instantly, total mental clarity descended upon John. The fear dissipated, to be replaced by cool, focused indignation and clean-burning energy. He ceased to worry about his family and instead began to think about the enemy’s vulnerabilities. They weren’t trained. They weren’t all armed with guns. They had no unified chain of command. They were a desperate, disparate rabble, acting out of fear and rage. His stance shifted. Every last detail from his firearms training came back to him, and more. The instincts, the confidence under fire of a Tier 1 operator, it was all there, on tap. The rifle stock was wedged more firmly into his shoulder. He put his left foot forward. Back at the threshold, the officers were providing cover by holding up bulletproof riot shields, while the RAF policemen emerged to take pot-shots at the enemy. John stacked up behind Pilot Officer Pork Barrington and Pilot Officer Bill Penry, who were in cover at the threshold of the armoury. John couldn’t get a good look at the enemy. It was a stalemate.

The officers handled the firefight competently. John knew that all RAF officers received basic firearms training, though the RAF Police received more specialized small arms training. Barrington shouted, ‘Retreat! Retreat!’ holding up his stun grenade.

Sergeant Longcot understood his meaning and tapped Berry on the shoulder. The riot shields edged slowly backwards and withdrew into the armoury. They waited. And waited. Trainers scuffing on the concrete floor. The enemy was taking the bait.

Barrington pulled the pin on his stun grenade and hurled it down the corridor. John and the officers covered their ears and looked away. The flashbang did what it said on the tin: there was a bright flash and a massive bang. John’s ears were ringing. Then the riot shields came down and the RAF Police and officers gunned down the enemy who were staggering in the hall. They were fish in a barrel. John conserved his ammunition. There were too many friendlies in front of him to safely take a shot.

More enemy rounded the corner ahead. John shuffled to the far left of the corridor so he could get a clean shot. He adjusted the rifle – his hands were rock-steady – and squeezed the trigger gently – one round pulverized the first man’s skull with an audible crunch. The body dropped. A minute adjustment – another squeeze. The man behind fell, another headshot, another blood-spatter. John dropped to a crouch, presenting a smaller target, and took down the next tango with a centre mass double tap. The first bullet wrought havoc in the man’s small intestine. The recoil jerked the gun barrel upwards to the chest where the second round shattered the ribcage and exploded the heart.

Another armed man was running at them. Barrington shot him directly in the head – he slammed to the concrete floor. The gunfire was superbly loud. The rest of the enemy retreated out of sight, around the corner.

‘Where did you learn to do that, Burrows?’ asked Pilot Officer Penry.

‘How did a shepherd boy slay a giant?’ said John. ‘My ability is not my own, but that of my Father in heaven who sent me to deliver his seed,’ he said, grim and collected.

‘Alright then,’ said Penry, with true British understatement.

As they passed the coding room, they saw the two men in there had already been shot and stabbed to death. Burrows shook his head. Barrington swore.

The RAF and Burrows proceeded to the corner. Nobody was there. They approached the entryway to the canteen. John had a sudden, strong intuition that the enemy was lying in wait. So he held back Flight Lieutenant Dexter, the point-man, pulled the pin and hurled a flashbang blind into the mess hall.

The stun grenade detonated. The enemy were reeling around in there, groaning. Five of them. Bleeding out of their ears, staggering. One man was on the floor screaming. The RAF came in and mopped up. A cacophony of double taps and all five enemy tangoes were lying on the floor, dead or wounded.

To John’s surprise, one of them was Sally Hughes. She was pale as a sheet, coughing blood. There were three gunshot wounds on her torso, pouring blood. John didn’t think he was the one who shot her, but it was hard to tell in the heat of battle.

‘Burrows…’ she wheezed.

John shook his head. Now it all made sense.

‘You did this…you told everyone about the bunker on social media…not just everyone but the Khanites specifically…what did you do, use your intel contacts with the beasters to send them our way? In the hopes they would, what, give you a spot inside?’

‘It was my best chance. The RAF wouldn’t have me, after all I’ve sacrificed for them. Jesus won’t have me either: I worshipped Khan to infiltrate the Sheep.’

‘And to spread your bets, right?’

She didn’t answer that one. By now, the officers had taken an interest.

‘Hughes! What are you doing here?’ said an incredulous Barrington.

‘Coxwell let you in, didn’t he?’ John had noticed that Coxwell excused himself from the Situation Room and hadn’t been seen for a while. ‘Is he with the attackers?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

John looked at the gunshot wound in her stomach and winced.

‘All the scenarios you laid out, the fire from the sky, the hailstones the size of golf balls, the massive earthquake. The best chance my baby and I have – had – of survival is in this bunker. Please, don’t kill Ian.’

‘I don’t make promises I can’t keep,’ Burrows said.

Sally expired with an exhale.

‘May God have mercy on you.’

‘I can’t believe Hughes betrayed us like that…’ said Dexter.

Longcot received a transmission from the Situation Room on his radio. It was Bedfellow’s voice, garbled because of all the layers of concrete: ‘enemy incoming…twenty or more….’ They had CCTV in the Situation Room and could see the mob headed their way. The canteen was a choke point in the middle of the bunker; the corridor bent around it in a square shape and continued to the north and the south, with the Situation Room to the north, and the barracks and bunker entrance to the south.

‘Should we pull back to the north corridor – take cover in the coding room?’ asked Penry.

‘There’s more than sixty metres between us and the coding room – and the corridor provides zero cover, so we might be gunned down retreating,’ said Corporal Jenkins.

‘And a retreat doesn’t get us closer to rescuing our families,’ noted Barrington.

Sergeant Longcot immediately perceived the main tactical danger was being flanked. There were two entrances to the canteen on opposite walls. He ordered Jenkins and Barrington to stand watch, while the rest of them barricaded the corridor on either side of the canteen to prevent a flanking manoeuvre. They hurled the chairs out, and the tables. They were in a rush, because they knew the enemy was coming.

John wasn’t as afraid as the others because he knew his fate and was receiving active help from Christ to steady his nerves. Though he could lose his temper over minor irritations, he had always been weirdly calm under real pressure.

The RAF proceeded to overturn the remaining two long tables to use as cover. The tables were stainless steel; they would stop bullets. John took some of the food and drink from the fridge and threw it on the floor at the south-facing door to the mess hall. Chicken, whiskey, orange juice, baked beans, anything. He also hurled some chairs at the threshold. The officers understood immediately and helped him out, although Dexter was worried about rationing.

‘You’ll be able to leave within a few days, at most,’ John promised him.

Longcot, covered by Jenkins, rigged up a frag grenade attached to a tripwire that ran across the threshold of the northern door to the mess hall, in case the enemy broke through the barricades and flanked them. One end of the wire was tied to the grenade, wedged against the wall by a chair, and the other end was tied around a radiator pipe. The north door was closed so that whoever opened it would automatically set off the tripwire, and the south door was left open; they needed to see their targets. As an afterthought, Penry killed the lights in the mess hall and kept them on in the corridor. Berry whispered to John: ‘One shot at a time. To minimize recoil.’

Burrows nodded.

Then John and the RAF heard shoes squeaking on the floor, running. John, Berry and Jenkins were positioned behind one table. Longcot, Dexter, Penry and Barrington took cover behind the other. Both tables faced the southern entrance, but they were positioned on the far western side of the mess hall, so that in the event of an attack from the northern entrance, they could easily switch targets and pull the tables around 70 degrees for extra cover.

The enemy’s footsteps slowed. They approached the mess hall cautiously. The first person to emerge was a brunette carrying a handgun. She peered around the side of the door and was instantly shot in the jaw by Longcot. She fell, screaming. Barrington shot her in the stomach, nonfatally, and was about to administer the coup de grace.

‘Cease fire!’ shouted Longcot. It was a traditional sniper tactic, to leave the wounded as bait. He calculated that there would be someone among the rabble, a partner perhaps, who would try to rescue her.

Sure enough, a man reached out to grab his fallen comrade and got his arm riddled with bullets. He fell into view and caught a salvo from four rifles centre mass. The wall behind him was covered with exit wounds.

Someone ran past the southern door. John shot him in the side. The man flopped against the corridor wall, was hit with even more bullets, and slid down until he was sat on the floor, dead. Another beaster slipped on the food and liquids by the mess hall door: John shot him in the knee. The man howled in agony before Berry fired a bullet into his chest.

A big man ran across the threshold, caught a bullet in the arm and another in the shoulder and ploughed into the corridor barricade, knocking the table aside. He lay sobbing and wounded, but he had succeeded in clearing a path for the others. A Molotov cocktail flew into the canteen and smashed against the wall behind Longcot, covering he and Penry in flames. Penry was able to successfully pat down the flames on his arm, but Longcot had to roll on the floor.

Four men dashed across the threshold of the southern entrance. Burrows shot one centre mass; three of them made it through the gap created by the big man. Burrows swivelled and adjusted the table to provide some cover from both entrances, since the enemy were obviously making for the north entrance. He, Berry and Jenkins covered their ears and hunkered down behind the table. The rear door swung open, breaking the tripwire.

BOOM! Shrapnel flew everywhere. Burrows’ ears were ringing. He could barely hear anything, except the whining and the bare thuds of rifle reports as Longcot gunned down another two beasters coming from the south. Burrows peeped over the table with his gun aimed at the north entrance, saw the doorway widened and scorched, with torn body parts splattered against the wall and rubble obstructing the hall. Another petrol bomb flew around the corner and smashed against John’s table.

The enemy struck. Several men barrelled in through both doors simultaneously with small arms: shotguns mostly, and pistols. The ones coming from the north had to navigate the rubble and those storming in from the south slipped on the food and drink or got stuck on the awkwardly placed chairs near the threshold. John shot two of them, firing centre mass. They collapsed in the doorway, and the next beasters were slowed by their corpses.

BOOM! Penry caught some buckshot in the face. The left side of his head was blown off. John remained unfazed thanks to divine intervention, and adrenaline. He raised his rifle scope and hit the bloke with the shotgun dead centre in the middle of the forehead. The man dropped like a sack of coal. More enemy spilled into the canteen.

The mob was aiming to swarm them with overwhelming numbers, relying on their disregard for human life.

John picked off another target with a double tap, but the enemy were getting closer. They had taken the table from the barricade and were using it as cover and returning heavy fire, from just ten metres away. A ricochet tore some skin off John’s cheek. He only noticed when he tasted the blood on his lip. He ducked back behind cover and reloaded. The mag slotted into place; the cursory firearms training he’d received from the MOD was mostly with pistols, but it was not rocket science to operate an assault rifle.

He emerged from cover only to find himself staring an AKM assault rifle down the barrel. The man pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The enemy glanced at his gun – Berry raised the barrel of his L85A2 and fired a single bullet that smashed the guy’s ribs and penetrated his left lung. The beaster fell, gasping and bleeding. He died quickly. The AKM must have jammed. Divine intervention, John knew.

Until now, the grenade and consequent rubble had put many beasters off approaching from the rear. John shot another man from the south door in the chest; but coming out of the north door was a berserker in tweeds and flat cap. He looked like a renegade gentleman farmer or gamekeeper. He held an old hunting shotgun in one hand, aimed it directly at John and pulled the trigger. The gun barrel blew up; wood splinters and old rusty metal dug into his face and neck. He lay dying on the floor courtesy of a severed jugular. It was a misfire, John knew. ‘Must be your lucky day,’ said Berry.

Without losing a beat, John switched targets and shot a beaster waving a machete in the head. Barrington and Berry were also mowing them down left, right and centre. John shot another man centre mass. And another. The latest tango dropped his cricket bat and splashed into a pool of someone else’s blood.

While Longcot was reloading, a woman climbed over his table wielding an axe – John shot her in the chest. She fell on top of the RAF officer, who impaled her with his bayonet.

A middle-aged woman with pink hair came running in with a gardening trowel. She slipped on the blood and juice and knocked herself out on the floor.

Then five men flooded John’s position – he and Barrington did their best firing on full auto into the crowd at close range. It was a dense mass of bodies. Some fell but the back ranks replaced them, and the mob was getting closer and closer.

Click. John’s L85 was out of ammo. A tall man with a gun and hate in his eyes was about to shoot him with an antique revolver. John said to him, ‘drop dead!’ The light went out of the man’s eyes, blood poured from his nose. He collapsed and had a leg-rattling seizure on the floor. Barrington saw it and shot the man in the face, but the leg kept spasming.

Jenkins stared at John aghast, but didn’t mention it. Some things you just don’t know how to talk about.

Then something came along and whacked John in the head. He fell backwards, dazed. He checked himself. No blood. John felt the dent in his helmet. He’d been shot in the head, but the helmet had stopped the bullet. There was a loud double tap from Longcot’s table.

‘Clear!’ shouted Longcot. Finally, the attack stopped. John poked his head above the table. The air was thick with gunsmoke. Longcot had shot the man with the revolver, and he lay dead on the floor with an entry wound above his top lip.

Dexter and Berry were already finishing off the wounded and taking their weapons. The leg of John’s would be assassin was still rattling. Berry was about to put another bullet in him. John stared at the face broken by a bullet.

‘Wait!’ John said.

‘This is not the time or the place for a mercy speech, Mr. Good Christian. Our families’ lives depend on us winning this fight,’ objected Dexter.

‘No. I have an idea,’ John said, getting closer. Then he switched to a whisper. ‘We strip the corpses and swap clothes with them. We shoot their faces to make it harder to recognise them. We pretend to be part of the mob.’

‘What happens when they don’t recognise us?’ asked Longcot.

‘There’s about sixty people in this mob. Around 100 came in through the gate. So far we have killed about twenty-five’ he said, indicating the bodies in the mess hall, those piled up around the doorways, and in the corridor. ‘They’re flooding into the base from all over the place. Sally told them about the bunker on social media; it’s mostly beasters, yes, and they know each other to some extent, but there are a lot of people who are just panicking civvies looking for shelter in a storm.’

‘Right,’ said Dexter. ‘We’re in disguise. Then what?’

‘We shoot them in the back. Obviously.’

‘For a man of God, you are pretty devious,’ said Barrington.

‘There are too many of them to fight fairly. God is with us. As far as he’s concerned, the beasters are already dead men and women walking.’

‘Jolly good.’

Barrington cast a mournful glance at Penry’s shattered face. They had worked together for four years.

‘Later, sir’ said Longcot. Barrington nodded.

They changed into the enemy’s bloodstained civilian clothes and then either shot those selected corpses’ heads to pulp or made them face the ground, to prevent their confrère’s from recognising them. Jenkins flicked the corridor light off. The beasters wore all kinds of clothes, but they had a penchant for cheap black tracksuits. The black represented the black of the olives in Khan’s Olive Branch symbol. Everyone in the UK outside the Cotswolds and Surrey wore tracksuits and cheap clothing due to the inflation.

Before they changed into the bloodstained civvies of their erstwhile assailants, John muttered a prayer to God, ‘please don’t hold this against us, it is not an act of false worship, merely a ruse to defeat the enemy.’ John stuffed the Glock down the waistband of his newly acquired tracksuit bottoms and ditched the tactical vest. He reloaded; he wanted a fresh mag for what came next. The other spare mags and his last stun grenade went in his pockets. Then they changed the beasters’ corpses into their officers’ uniforms. This proved much harder than it sounded.

‘Putting trousers on a dead man is no joke,’ said Barrington. As Longcot shuffled the trousers on another corpse’s legs, they heard talking and footsteps in the corridor. The enemy were coming.

Dexter cried out, ‘All clear! Come on in.’

Longcot just finished hitching the camouflage trousers up on the corpse and stood up straight when the mob came hesitantly into the canteen. They would have slipped on the food, the drinks, and the blood if it weren’t for all the broken glass on the concrete floor. The beasters were amazed at the number of dead bodies, mostly from their side.

‘They put up quite the fight, eh?’ said a short, bald man with a thick Glaswegian accent.

‘There was only seven of them?’ This comment came from a big, bearded man with a Thompson submachine gun. His face was covered with scars and he wore the standard black tracksuit. His eyes were dead. John recognised him from the CCTV footage as the one following directions on his phone. Clearly, he was some kind of ringleader.

‘That’s right. There’s more down the corridor, in the Situation Room. You go on ahead – we have wounded, and we need a breather,’ said Barrington, doing his best cockney accent. It was surprisingly good.

Berry was trying so hard not to laugh.

The ringleader of the beasters now had a crowd of some twenty men and women stood in the canteen and in the hall behind him. He stared hard at Barrington for a while. Their clothes were all bloody, which added credibility to the part about some of them being wounded.

‘This is the canteen, yeah?’

‘I prefer to call it the officers’ mess,’ said Burrows.

It took a beat, but they got there. A few titters came from the crowd. The big man grinned at John.

‘We’re hungry.’

‘Yeh, we’re bleedin stawvin!’ cried a shrill voice from the back ranks. A small, wiry man in a white t-shirt, with a heavily wrinkled face.

John’s heart sank. If they broke bread with these tools, they would soon be rumbled. RAF officers can only play at being working class for so long. They’d probably give themselves away just by using knives and forks properly. (Some of the beasters spoke the King’s English, of course, but this particular mob wasn’t as uniformly posh as the RAF officers).

‘There’ll be plenty of time to eat later,’ Berry said. ‘Right now, we need to strike them before the reinforcements have time to get here. While we have the momentum. Cut the head off the snake in the Situation Room.’

The big man pondered this. His eyes narrowed.

‘How do you know there’s a Situation Room down there?’ he asked, with a momentary flash of suspicion.

‘It’s a pretty obvious thing to have in a military bunker,’ said John.

‘Come on, boss, let’s go! Leave the food, we can drink the officers’ blood instead!’

‘Aright. Come on. But you lot better not have eaten all the good stuff by the time we get back or there’ll be hell to pay!’ the head beaster said, waving his submachine gun at John.

‘There will,’ John agreed.

The big man led his band of thugs into the corridor at walking pace. Someone switched the light on, and they saw all their fallen comrades more clearly. A woman started crying over one of the corpses.

‘Brenda, get out the bleedin’ way,’ said the small cockney in the white shirt. All eyes were on the woman and the corpse, except the big man, who kept going down the corridor. He was anxious to see how tightly the blast-proof steel door to the Situation Room was sealed.

Following Longcot and Jenkins’ lead, John and the officers switched their L85’s to full automatic and sneaked out into the corridor behind the mob. Longcot and Jenkins took a knee; the others stood up behind them. There was a brief moment where one of the beasters, a young lad in a red tracksuit, turned to look at them. His mouth fell open.

John and the RAF let rip on twenty people facing the other way. John aimed centre mass; the recoil soon carried his bullets upward into the hearts and lungs of his enemies, and he had to fight to keep the barrel down. He slowed down to fire in bursts for the sake of control.

It was a massacre. Six assault rifles pumping bullets into a crowd, each at a rate of around 700 rounds per minute, is not a pretty sight. It was also terrifically loud in such a closed space. The walls, floor and ceiling were splattered with blood. The enemy didn’t stand a chance. The smell of death and gunsmoke became very strong. Berry retched.

‘Fish in a barrel,’ Barrington said.

‘Bad fish,’ John specified, reloading his L85. ‘They never stood a chance. Come on.’

The RAF and Burrows put their tactical vests and bergens back on.

As they proceeded down the corridor, they came to the generator room. The generator was still buzzing away like a lawnmower.

‘Perfect,’ John said. ‘Now we can kill the lights.’

‘We won’t be able to see anything!’ said Dexter.

‘That’s why you need to go back and grab some NVG’s from the armoury,’ John said, tapping his helmet. ‘And get some suppressors while you’re at it. I think I saw some lying around.’

Dexter stared at him, unsure whether to applaud his tactical nous or reprimand him for his insolence. But John wasn’t RAF. He wasn’t part of the chain of command. And he had little respect for rank or expertise. Dexter didn’t know what box to put Burrows in, but he had a kind of overwhelming unofficial authority that Dexter had rarely encountered before, except in aristocrats.

‘Come on, Lieutenant – let’s go!’ John said.

‘Flight Lieutenant,’ muttered Harry Dexter, as he ran to the armoury, while John, Jenkins, Berry, Longcot and Barrington took up positions to defend the corridor, should another wave of attackers approach. There was no follow up attack. The enemy needed to regroup after the beating they had taken. The main force had been defeated. John estimated that there were around fifteen tangoes remaining after the massacre, but they still had the hostages. The remaining enemy were probably scared. That made them dangerous.

While the others were talking about their ammunition, Berry furtively sidled up to Burrows.

‘Is this really necessary?’ he muttered. ‘Can’t you use – other means?’

‘So you saw it, too.’ Burrows said, matter-of-factly.

Berry nodded.

‘It is better not to ask God to do something we are capable of doing ourselves. ‘‘You shall not test the lord, your God.”’’ Matthew 4:7. God prefers to work through normal mechanisms and natural laws where feasible, but where these means are not sufficient to perform his will, or a demonstration of divine power is warranted, the laws of nature are suspended.’

Berry stood in pensive silence a moment.

‘I see.’

Dexter returned with a Bergen full of gear. Watching how the others did it, John screwed the suppressor on to the end of his L85’s barrel. The idea was that suppressors would help them to take the beasters out stealthily, without triggering a massacre of hostages. Despite this, John knew that real suppressors weren’t like the ones Bond used in the movies. They were actually pretty loud.

Then John lowered his goggles. They switched on automatically. There was a thin whine. It was way too bright. He flipped them back up again.

Barrington sniggered.

‘Barrington, stop laughing and turn the bleeding lights off!’ John bellowed in a very deep voice.

Jenkins was grinning. As an enlisted man, he found the idea of some civvy bossing around The Ruperts inherently hilarious.

Barrington reluctantly flicked the corridor lights off. Then he headed to the generator room and cut the power throughout the facility. They all flipped the NVG’s on their helmets down. The world turned different shades of green. The RAF’s rifles were equipped with lasers that were visible only with the goggles on, but Burrows’ wasn’t showing.

‘How do I turn the laser thing on?’

‘Here,’ said Dexter. He leaned in and switched on the Laser Light Module Mark 3. A green beam, invisible to the naked eye, shone from Burrows’ rifle.

‘Thanks. Get HQ on the radio,’ Burrows said. ‘We need to verify the situation in the dormitory.’

Dexter keyed his radio and relayed Burrows’ request. He listened a while and eventually said, ‘Understood, over.’ He looked up, facing Burrows and the team.

‘Yes, they are holding hostages in the dormitory. Including our families. They are okay. At least, they were, the last time the Station Command Team could see in there,’ said Dexter.

‘Any other news?’

‘The soldiers at Dalton Barracks are busy keeping order in Didcot. There’s been an uprising there.’

‘What about the police?’

‘They’re tied up in Swindon. What with all the fire from heaven, and bloody water and panic, they’re a tad busy.’

Burrows muttered a curse. He’d assumed as much.

‘Brize Norton?’ asked Longcot.

‘All hands on deck. They’re mobilising. Probably thinking they might get the nod to intervene in the Middle East. And the RAF Regiment there are too busy defending their house to save ours,’ said Dexter.

‘Well, I suppose it’s better this way. I don’t like waiting around for the government – no offence,’ Burrows said.

‘None taken. We do more waiting on the government than anyone,’ said Barrington, an active duty Typhoon pilot.

‘Let’s move.’

‘Go quietly, lads,’ said Longcot.

Around the corner, the next stretch of corridor was very dark. They saw four enemy soldiers down there, about thirty metres distant, armed with revolvers and shotguns. One of them was faintly illuminated. He was fiddling about with his smartphone, trying to find the torch feature. They were either guarding access to the dormitory, or a scouting party sent to find out what had happened to their mates.

‘Simultaneously,’ Longcot whispered. ‘From left to right’, he said, pointing from himself on the far left of the corridor to the leftmost beaster, from Barrington and Penry in the middle to the guards in the centre, and from Burrows on the right to the rightmost guard. All the RAF men nodded. Aiming right down the sights was a little tricky with the protruding goggles. Instead, they took aim with their lasers, which were invisible to the targets. Burrows, on the right hand side of the corridor, aimed at the chest of the rightmost beaster, a small man in a hoody, holding a revolver.

‘Three, two, one.’

Phut. All four targets dropped simultaneously. ‘Tangoes down.’

But there was a ruckus in the dormitory. The shots had been heard.

A loud gunshot. John’s heart lurched. He felt sick with dread. A body was tossed out into the hall, from the dormitory. A woman in jeans and a fleece. He couldn’t clearly identify her via the green haze of the NVG’s. Owing to the obvious blonde hair, she wasn’t Delia Wrencombe, so she must have been one of their wives or girlfriends. For a moment, the thought, ‘what if it’s Penny?’ flashed into John’s mind, but he disregarded it.

‘Because of your attack, we have just killed one of your hostages,’ yelled one of the beasters in the dorm. His voice was hoarse, with a thick West Country accent.

‘Any further attacks will lead to more hostages being killed. Turn the bloody lights back on, or we will kill someone else!’ said a rough-voiced cockney.

Barrington cursed. He raced down the corridor to look at the corpse.

‘Get back here, Barrington!’ hissed Longcot. ‘The rest of you, stay put.’ He raised his rifle to cover Barrington, if necessary.

Then the officer came jogging back, trying not to look too relieved.

‘Dexter. I’m sorry. It’s your wife,’ Barrington said.

Dexter groaned and leaned against the wall, as if physically struck. Then he went quiet. John knew that his family would be safe because of God’s promises, but all the same, it was nice to get some confirmation. He felt bad for Dexter, but now was not the time for group therapy.

‘Wrencombe has been shot dead, too, in the radio room. Probably during the initial assault,’ noted Barrington.

‘I knew we were being too aggressive,’ muttered Longcot, with a sidelong glance at Burrows.

John wasted no time firing right back at him. ‘I’m a think tank analyst. I write white papers. You’re the professional military policeman and NCO. If you had a problem with my tactics, you should have spoken up at the time.’

No one disputed that.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Berry, looking at John and Longcot by turns.

‘We turn the lights back on,’ said Burrows. ‘Jenkins.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the corporal said, with a dash of irony.

Dexter, the ranking officer, scowled at him.

‘I mean, uh, yes.’

Jenkins scuttled off, relieved to be headed in the opposite direction.

‘We’re turning the lights back on!’ shouted Burrows. ‘Give us a minute!’

‘One minute!’ yelled the cockney.

John flipped his goggles up in anticipation of the light. He didn’t want to get dazzled again.

‘We could try raising Brize Norton again, or another RAF base,’ suggested Barrington lamely, indicating the radio room on the left.

‘Bedfellow will already have tried that,’ said Dexter. ‘There was some word of the police calling by when the situation is under control in Swindon.’

‘We’d be waiting ‘til kingdom come,’ said Barrington.

‘Well, that’s not too far off,’ said Berry, with a glance at John.

‘So we’re on our own.’

‘God is with us,’ said John.

‘Right.’

‘How are we going to pull this off without losing any more hostages?’

‘We could put tear gas in the air ventilation and filtration system. There are some canisters in the armoury,’ suggested John.

Burrows checked his watch. Jenkins had 18 seconds left.

Dexter shook his head. ‘Too dangerous. The dormitory is relatively big. The gas wouldn’t diffuse instantaneously. Could be time for them to off some hostages. I mean, some more hostages.’ Dexter was unable to keep the accusation out of his tone; it was John’s idea to proceed down the corridor. The Flight Lieutenant felt that if he had simply pulled rank and taken charge, this could have been avoided.

John checked the time again. 6 seconds remaining. The lights came on. Burrows breathed a sigh of relief.

A moment’s awkward silence.

Jenkins came running back, breathless. ‘What’s the plan?’ he said.

‘If you do not all surrender within five minutes, we will kill two hostages,’ yelled the cockney beaster.

Burrows checked his watch to note the time remaining.

‘Well, we’re not surrendering,’ said Longcot. ‘They’ll just execute us, then kill the hostages. And the Station Command Team will never surrender, anyway. It’s against the regulations.’

‘I’ve still got a flashbang. I’ll throw it in through the door and we can storm the room while they’re stunned,’ said John.

‘I picked up a breaching charge,’ said Barrington, tapping his bergen. ‘Figured it might come in handy.’

‘Anyone got any better ideas? Or do you want to wait five minutes to see if your wives and kids get shot?’ demanded Burrows.

Flight Lieutenant Dexter gulped. ‘He’s right,’ he said, morosely, still reeling from his wife’s execution. ‘There’s no negotiating with these people. We go in, fast and hard.’

‘We could try sneaking in behind them through the ventilation shaft,’ noted Longcot. ‘There’s access through the radio room.’

‘Are the shafts big enough?’ asked John.

‘Unless you’re Blimp Tarpley.’

They sniggered at that one, except for Dexter.

‘Four minutes!’ yelled the cockney beaster.

‘Sod it, we go in through the front door,’ John concluded. ‘Barrington, give Jenkins your breaching charge. Longcot, approach via the ventilation shaft. Key your radio when you’re in position.’

Barrington nodded and passed the breaching charge to Jenkins, who took point. Burrows, Berry, Dexter and Barrington followed him down the corridor. Longcot split off from the main team at the radio room, where he saw Wrencombe’s corpse on the floor. He’d always liked Delia; they had struck up a bit of a flirtation in the past few months. But now was not the time for mourning. Now was the time for vengeance, and rescue. He smashed a grate off the ventilation shaft with the butt of his L85. He might get into position too late, but the risk was worth it for the chance of catching the enemy unawares from behind.

The RAF passed Allison Dexter’s corpse, and stacked up on either side of the door, which was shut and locked. Harry Dexter stared at his wife for a moment, lost in a traumatised reverie.

‘Harry,’ said Barrington.

Dexter dragged his eyes away. His face was curdled wroth.

John glanced at his watch. Three minutes.

Jenkins checked Barrington’s breaching charge was safe. For the sake of their own health and any hostages who may be close to the door, they needed to use the bare minimum amount of explosive.

Meanwhile, Longcot crawled down the ventilation shaft, using the torch on his phone to navigate. He sounded like an elephant in a cupboard and could scarcely believe nobody heard him. The others waited for him.

Shots were fired inside the dormitory. One, two. The RAF men were praying that their families were unharmed.

Jenkins received a transmission. Burrows looked at him. He nodded. Longcot was in position. The RAF Police sergeant aimed through the grate of the ventilation shaft. His L85 was pointed at a beaster who had a gun to the head of Barrington’s wife, Hettie. He wanted to open fire immediately but forced himself to hold off until he heard the breaching charge detonate.

Jenkins placed the breaching charge on the door.

The six men took a few steps back and faced away from the door. Burrows covered his ears.

Even with his ears covered, Burrows heard the sharp bang and felt the pressure wave from the explosive waft against his back. It was like being pushed. Then he pulled the pin on his flashbang and tossed it into the room, blind, without exposing his torso to gunfire.

BANG! A flash of intense light. There was screaming and groaning.

Burrows went in hard behind Dexter, who was plugging away, hitting targets left and right. The RAF fanned out, trying to dominate the entire room. The enemy were disorientated, but it was hard to tell the difference between them and the hostages. Not all of the opposition wore ‘beaster black’, and not all the hostages were women and children. It was also possible that some hostages had wrested weapons from their captors. And Longcot would be lurking around near the back of the dorm. Some collateral damage was inevitable.

Burrows saw a dead male hostage and a pistol wielding man in a black tracksuit reeling around, trying to aim. John dispatched him with a double tap, centre mass. He kept moving forward, aggressively.

Another beaster with a machete was cowering behind a bunkbed, struggling to regain his faculties. Burrows shot him in the head at close range, splattering the floor with brain tissue and blood. He kept his right eye a few inches above the L85’s scope to avoid tunnel vision. Gunshots were going off all over the place.

On the left-hand side of the centre aisle, he saw a beaster. Jennifer was wrestling him for his knife. John’s kids were hiding beneath the bed.

‘Mum – get off him!’ Burrows commanded. Jen pushed away from the man. Once she was clear, John immediately shot the enemy four times in the chest.

Now was no time for a reunion; Burrows continued to push forward, hyper-focused. Jennifer yelled something about Penny, but he couldn’t hear amidst all the shooting and screaming. Burrows’ mother secured the children, taking them away from the action and toward the hall.

John shot another tango in the chest. It seemed to Burrows as if time was running in slow motion, especially since everyone in the dorm other than himself and the RAF was still stunned.

A man with a baseball bat was about to take a swing at a teenage girl – Burrows shot him in the shoulder and again in the chest. He lay on the floor, bleeding and sucking air. The girl started kicking him in the head as he lay dying.

John heard the crash of further gunfire. A man ahead of him dropped dead, next to another two beasters’ corpses. Hettie ran past John, screaming. Thank you, Longcot.

Most of the enemy must be down by now, Burrows thought. A young man sprang out from behind a bed with a switchblade. Burrows screamed and ran him through with the bayonet, raking the blade around in the intestines and pulling the trigger. Click. He was out of ammo. Burrows pushed the beaster over, leaving the L85 inside of him, ducked behind a bunkbed for cover and swapped to the Glock 17 in his chest holster. He remembered to flick the safety off before putting two rounds in the young beaster’s chest.

Then John emerged from cover to see only one beaster remaining, in the centre aisle between the beds, holding Penny hostage with a pistol to her head. He was a man, about forty years old, with a thick black beard. Penny was terrified.

 Read the next chapter here: https://www.robertensor.com/post/operation-wrath-of-god-the-rapture-the-second-coming-the-campaign-of-armageddon-and-the-kingdom-o-12

[i] Deuteronomy 20:4.