Their Darkest Hour Read Online Free Page A

Britain – or if they had, the senior officers had never bothered to tell the pilots.  Her threat receiver screamed again, too late.  The entire aircraft buckled around her...
     
    Desperately, moving so quickly that she hadn't quite realised what she was doing, she pulled the ejection lever and exploded out of the aircraft, into the suddenly-hostile sky.
     
    ***
    The first of the French tanks were coming into view, a trio of AMX-56 Leclerc Main Battle Tanks.  There were a handful of soldiers flanking them, watching for antitank teams that could target the heavier vehicles with Javelin missiles, but Gavin could tell that a number of Frenchmen were missing.  The French hadn't been engaged so far, which suggested that Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Luc Baptiste had a plan of his own.  Who knew what those missing French soldiers would be doing while the British attempted to take out the main force?
     
    A streak of light slammed down from high above and struck the lead French tank.  It exploded in a colossal fireball, the turret actually being blown into the air.  Gavin stared in utter disbelief.  What the fuck ?  Had someone in the Royal Artillery accidentally loaded live ammunition into the big guns?  A second missile struck a tank, followed by a third that missed, almost toppling its target over through the colossal force of the explosion.  Heedless of his personal safety, Gavin pulled himself back to his feet, his mind spinning with the sheer impossibility of the situation.  They were under attack!  They were in the heart of the British Army’s Training Area and they were under attack!
     
    He glanced back towards where the Challengers were positioned, hoping that their crews had enough sense to bail out before they were targeted too.  Their unknown opponent – once might have been a dreadful accident, but two or more suggested deliberate malice – had to have gained control of the air.  They could presumably detect any moving tanks...but who were they?  There had been no report that Russia was planning anything drastic and the only other nation that might have had the capability to attack Salisbury Plain and the garrisons surrounding it was the United States.  The thought that they might be at war with America was absurd.
     
    Something caught his eye and he glanced to the east, towards Tidsworth Garrison.  A streak of fire was falling from the sky towards the Garrison.  It dropped below the horizon, seconds before there was a brilliant flash of light, followed by a massive fireball.  The sound of thunder reached his ears seconds later.  It looked almost like a baby nuke!  Other fireballs were rising too.  It didn't take his intimate knowledge of the training area to know that they were rising from the location of many of the other garrisons surrounding Salisbury Plain.  He spared a brief thought for the men and equipment that had presumably been destroyed in the blasts, and then started to run for the command vehicle.  The tactical command centre had been buried well behind the ambush point; it should – should – have escaped detection.
     
    He waved a hand at Sergeant Gibbon as the Fijian soldier appeared from the concealed tanks.  “Get a crew down to check out the French and get them under cover,” he barked, trusting the Sergeant to deal with the situation.  A number of young soldiers looked badly shocked, holding their personal weapons as if they were unsure what to do with them.  He silently blessed his own insistence on issuing loaded weapons to the men, even on training exercises.  It had been intended to ensure that the tankers were used to carrying them, but he had a feeling that they might be needing them to fight.  “And then send a runner to each of the garrisons.  I need to know what we have left in the fight.”
     
    The tactical command vehicle was half-buried under a small mountain of earth.  Gavin pulled at the hatch and it opened, revealing a cramped compartment with