of them were queuing to be processed; name and national insurance number taken down, given an orange waistcoat, an ID badge and a supervisor to report to.
Adam returned from his hurried jog around the dome’s perimeter - a cursory inspection to see how much work they’d need to carry out to successfully contain the area. He found most of the gunners gathered around the backs of their trucks, amidst off-loaded and stacked spools of razor wire and equipment yokes laid out in several orderly rows. They were crowded tightly together, heads cocked and leaning forward; a circular and improbably large rugby scrum of soldiers, watching a TV in the middle.
Why the hell are those lazy fuckwits standing around?
‘Hey!’ he bellowed. ‘Sergeant? What’s going on here?’
Sergeant Walfield straightened up guiltily. ‘Sorry, sir. Prime Minister’s just come on the telly. Thought I’d let the lads hear what ‘e’s got to say.’
Adam crossed the plaza towards them, grinding his teeth with frustration and debating whether to give Danny Walfield a mouthful for letting the lads down tools when they were supposed to be getting a wriggle on and erecting a secure barricade across the front of the plaza. As he stepped through the tight knot of men he saw Bushey holding a small portable TV aloft, intently listening, his RAF-blue beret clasped tightly in one hand.
‘PM’s just coming on,’ he explained to his CO.
The men wanted to hear what was to be announced. For that matter, so did Adam.
‘All right then, let’s see what he’s got to say.’ He turned round and picked out the sergeant. ‘Then, Danny, I want them straight back to work.’
‘Aye, sir,’ replied Walfield.
Adam squatted down beside Bushey and listened in. The small TV screen flickered with the flash of press cameras as Prime Minister Charles Harrison, flanked by his ever-present advisor, Malcolm Jones, stepped up onto the small podium. Adam thought the poor bastard looked haggard and pale, his tie loosened, his jacket off and shirt sleeves rolled up; like some unlucky sod who’d worked through the night and been roused from a nap ten minutes ago with a strong black coffee.
The Prime Minister uttered some grateful platitudes for the press assembling here at short notice, and after steadying himself with a deep breath, he began.
‘Yesterday, during morning prayers in Riyadh, the first of many bombs exploded in the holy mosques of Mecca and Medina, and in several more mosques in Riyadh. A radical Shi’ite group sent a message shortly after to Al Jazeera claiming responsibility for the devices. Similar explosions occurred yesterday in several other cities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Iraq. The situation has continued to worsen in the region. Because of the potential danger this poses to our remaining troops, and after consultation with Arab leaders, a decision was taken to pull all of our troops out of the region until this particular problem has corrected itself.’
Adam shook his head. So far it seemed as if the Prime Minister was doing his best not to mention the word ‘oil’. A lot of news time yesterday had been filled with industry experts talking about the drastic impact the unrest was going to have on crude oil supplies; assessments on reserves in the supply chain, reserves in the holds of tankers still at sea - unaffected and able to deliver - and the possible per-barrel price these reserves might hit in the next twenty-four hours. Five hundred, seven hundred . . . even a thousand dollars a barrel for the next few weeks - that was the kind of punditry they’d been getting all yesterday afternoon.
Today, however, it seemed by consensus between the news channels, no one was discussing barrel prices, reserves or shortfalls. Today’s news agenda was all about getting the boys back home from the troubled Middle East.
It smacked of misdirection. Adam wondered if someone was leaning on the media to steer the agenda elsewhere; to keep people’s minds on matters abroad. There had been endless news footage of our poor lads holed up, besieged and waiting for their planes home, market places running with blood, baying crowds dancing around flaming cars, blackened corpses being dragged behind rusting trucks through rubbish-strewn streets. Horrific attention-grabbing stuff, in marked contrast to yesterday’s footage of smoking oil refineries, towers of orange flame licking through ruptured storage tanks, and twisted piping belching black smoke. The refineries around Baku in Azerbaijan, Paraguana in Venezuela, rendered useless; the striking image of a tanker ripped open and spewing gigantic black lily