The Bear's Cage Unlocked

By Andrew MacMichael

It is 2041, 10 years after the Iran-Israeli nuclear war. The Gulf is a radioactive wasteland. Fires continue to burn out of control and a warm blanket of smog envelops the earth. Sea levels rise as the polar ice melts. The world economy has stuttered to a halt. The UK emergency government continues in power, self-interested, unelected, and corrupt. Repression triggers a backlash from the radical groups, and 10 years of bitter civil war follow. A new radical group is funding the armed struggle and is seeking a showdown.

Mary Brand, head of counterintelligence for the main rebel group wants to restart the democratic process. Bryan Sansom, section chief at MI5 sees a chance for peace and works with Sarah Chilcott Minister for National Defence to bring the opposition in from the cold. Sansom is desperate to find out who is bankrolling the opposition groups. Time is beginning to run out.

Richard Smart, Minister for Homeland Security is determined to impose order at all costs terrified by the spectre of Easter Island Syndrome where a society turns in on itself and begins to self-destruct. He believes all opposition must be crushed before the nation can be reborn.

Brand and Chilcott are relying on the bravery of Jon Grogan a troubled ex-soldier to bring sanity back to the world, helped by Sukri Chakraborty an MI5 agent. An attack on the new Thames Gateway Barrier on the eve of a tidal surge from the North Sea threatens to derail the peace process and devastate London.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398474390

Andrew MacMichael

Andrew MacMichael lives and works in the West Midlands with his wife, five cats and numerous children. Before writing speculative science fiction, he worked initially as a lawyer, and later in the accountancy profession. Andrew became interested in climate change whilst at Southampton University studying environmental law. He believes that mankind is now faced with a stark ultimatum—adapt or face extinction.

Book preview

The Bear's Cage Unlocked

Andrew MacMichael

Austin Macauley Publishers

The Bear's Cage Unlocked

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgement

1. Morning

2. Nessa

3. The Unforeseen

4. The Intelligence Man

5. The Parting of the Ways

6. First Contact

7. The Way of It

8. The Ministers

9. Homecoming

10. A Private Conversation

11. The Mission

12. Recovery

13. Home Run

14. A Meeting

15. Hiring Fair

16. Holding Pattern

17. Stocktake

18. Filip

19. Casting the Accounts

20. The Ashes of the Day

21. Still Waters

22. The Big Smoke

23. Plans

24. Supply Chain

25. Review Stand

26. Made in Heaven

27. Through a Glass Darkly

28. Consequences

29. Trading with the Enemy

30. State of Readiness

31. Night Crossing

32. Breakthrough

33. A Walk in the Park

34. The Heath

35. Creatures of the Night

36. Game Changer

37. Plainsong

Dedication

To the patience and support of my lifelong love, Amanda, without whom this book would never have been written.

About the Author

Andrew MacMichael lives and works in the West Midlands with his wife, five cats and numerous children. Before writing speculative science fiction, he worked initially as a lawyer, and later in the accountancy profession. Andrew became interested in climate change whilst at Southampton University studying environmental law. He believes that mankind is now faced with a stark ultimatum—adapt or face extinction.

Copyright Information ©

Andrew MacMichael 2023

The right of Andrew MacMichael to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398471771 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398474383 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398474390 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I want to celebrate the people who have helped me write The Bear’s Cage Unlocked.

Firstly, I must thank my wonderful wife, Amanda, who has always been an enthusiastic supporter of protecting the environment. Back in the late 1970s as a teenager, she lent me a paperback on environmental change. I was at Southampton University at the time, studying environmental law as part of my degree. I was completely drawn in and, worryingly, some forty or so years later, several of the predictions made in the book she lent me are already taking place.

For years I have carried the basic plotline of the story in my head, and Amanda encouraged me to put it down on paper, emailing me links to environmental developments and articles she had come across on the web. She lent me books from her growing library on environmental issues and we discussed the way we thought the climate might soon change. The thing that has struck us both is the speed with which climate change is now taking place. So, in a very real sense this book would not have been written without Amanda’s inspiration and enthusiasm. I also want to thank the team at Austin Macauley for their patience and support.

1. Morning

The rain was drizzling against the sides of the cab as the truck rocked gently to and fro in the wind. A trickle of water meandered slowly down the window, as random droplets of heavy rain peppered the windscreen. It was the Wet, the period between Christmas and May. It was the time of torrential downpours when flash floods could strip away the surface of a road in a matter of hours and the rivers broke their banks. Then it would be the Summer which would last until August when the sun scorched the land. Finally, it would be the Smoke when the peat on the moorlands burnt out of control with wildfires destroying the woodlands and the storms would cross the Atlantic. There were only three seasons a year these days and rapidly that was becoming two.

As the cab of the truck rocked back and forth, she returned to her thoughts, sour and inconclusive, staring at the necklace of rain droplets coursing down the windscreen. Her dark thoughts left her no respite. Grogan was a puzzle to her. Sometimes easy to talk to and at other times brooding and angry, almost a different man. She had met him in Leeds during the early days but only really got to know him well after being drafted into the sleeper cell at the farm two years earlier. At that time Grogan was seeing Alice, a quiet Scots girl.

Three months ago, Liz and Steve had been parachuted in to lead the unit. They came from the National Alliance, which everyone called the Ally Pally. They seemed to be bankrolling everything these days, supplying all the hardware as well as quite a lot of the rations. That level of pull bought them a powerful say—it bought them control. Steve was supposed to have been in the military but surprisingly didn’t seem all that comfortable around guns. Liz was the political officer, which meant she was in overall control. She had problems, Sukri thought with a grimace. She was prone to take snap decisions that she later tried to play down. Prior to their arrival, Grogan had been running the group. He had stepped aside without a murmur when they arrived. But their lack of combat experience was clearly a problem, so Grogan continued the basic training for the squad. He had been a weapons instructor in Northern Iraq before the War so that suited him down to the ground. He had obviously done all the routines many times, and it was very slick. It was a simplified version of standard British Army drill and she had picked it up very quickly. It became so noticeable, that Grogan had said that Sukri was a natural. It was about that time they had become close. Strangely, they had both remained on good terms with Alice. She was about the only other person in the squad who had shown any real weapons skills at the range on the edge of the moors.

The rain was unceasing. It seemed to rain all the time these days. Certainly, it was drier in the South but the rainstorms there could be just as intense. The wind was blowing in sporadic gusts, and the green pickup Jeep occasionally rocked back and forth, protected by the deep fold in the hillside. Above them the road curved up the hill towards the moorland. At least one supercell storm was on the way. That could mean winds well over 100 mph and hailstones the size of golf balls. When it really got going the lightening would become almost constant, and there would be heavy, very heavy rain. More of the remaining windfarms would be wrecked, and the electricity supplies, already hit by the dearth of oil and gas following the War, would become even more fragile.

But whilst it was happening, nothing would fly, and that was the real point of it all. They couldn’t compete with the gunships, so this would give them a chance to even up the odds. But people didn’t normally choose to venture out in this sort of weather which was why it was all so puzzling. She could not understand why the national energy agency was rushing in a new manager to the regional fracking centre. Did they have to get someone there before the storms got worse or was there an urgent production problem they needed to solve? It puzzled her. She did not like loose ends; she positively distrusted them. They frightened her.

No one could predict precisely where the storm would break. But that was a good thing. It would knock the authorities off balance as they tried to second-guess its path, leaving them free to get on with the job. So, the attention of the security services would be on other things, and it would be a walk in the park. Or so they had been told but, then again, that was what they always said.

‘I still don’t get it,’ said Grogan, ‘why are we doing this? We’ve been undercover for three years. Why throw it all away, just for this?’ All about him the cab lay in impenetrable darkness. It wasn’t yet dawn on a wet miserable day in April. Scudding clouds were racing unseen across the early morning skies. The truck shivered after a fresh burst of wind and buffeting, causing the cab to rattle. There was going to be a storm, a massive one.

Her voice cut through the darkness more sharply than she had intended: ‘Are you still complaining, Jon? How come you are always moaning?’ She was a tall woman with strong features, and a firm sense of direction. Grogan had a slighter build and was some ten years older. He was beginning to grey at the temples.

‘No, that’s not right,’ said Grogan, but clearly with little or no real conviction. They had been awake for most of the night and were now becoming fractious. Normally they were like peas in a pod but not now; it must be the heightened level of stress they both felt before going into action. Making the strained atmosphere worse wouldn’t make the mission go any smoother.

After a pregnant silence, she added, ‘They want to make a statement; they want to make them sit up and take notice.’

The Emergency Government had been in power since the 2031 Iran-Israeli War, some ten years earlier. The War had changed nothing, and it had changed everything. The Gulf had been devastated by the nuclear fallout, and the economy of the UK—like that of the rest of the globe—had come to a shuddering halt. The world became enveloped by a warm blanket of smog from the fires raging in the oil and gas fields. The levels of radioactivity meant that some of those oil and gas well fires had still not been put out. The equilibrium in the global climate seemed to alter, and the rate of change seemed to fast forward at least 80 years.

The ice in the Antarctic and Greenland was visibly shrinking every year. The process was beginning to accelerate because of the increased level of heat retained in the oceans and by the land. It meant that parts of the USA were becoming almost uninhabitable due to the excessive heat. The level in the Hoover Dam was now so low, that none of the remaining water could flow out. It was now trapped there for ever. But in the UK there seemed to be extreme thunderstorms and downpours. In the winter months there was thunder snow in Scotland and then extreme heat in the brief summer months. Africa was in turmoil, as vast populations moved to find drinkable water and land they could cultivate. Refugees were constantly trying to enter Europe.

But some things never changed. There was now talk of drilling for oil at the North Pole given that it was becoming ice free during the summertime. And with that the North American powers were beginning to square up to the Russians, who in the previous century had laid claim to large swathes of the artic seabed for themselves and the oil and gas that went with it. Maybe that had been just a cheap publicity stunt, but they had still left their flag on the seabed and the commander who had it put there had been made a hero of the Russian Federation. And they had also built a futuristic military base at Trefoil on the remote archipelago of Franz Josef Land. So, it must have meant something.

But Grogan wasn’t going to let it rest. He was like a dog with a bone. ‘Yes—but why bother putting us into deep cover if they were only going to blow it for something as pointless as this? And what’s more—if we get caught up in the storm they are talking about—how are we going to get out in one piece?’

Sukri was slightly taken aback by Grogan’s speech; he wasn’t normally this talkative this early in the morning. It must have been on his mind. The storm would ground the air fleet, but it wouldn’t stop the soldiers coming out to get them any more than it would stop them from travelling back across country. It would be a race to get the job done and back to the base at the farmhouse on the edge of the moor as quickly as possible, unnoticed, and unseen, with the devil take the hindmost.

Ironically, the sleeper cell had been setting up the farm for the last three years on a central government resettlement grant. The new policy was to increase food production and get people back on the land after the flooding and depression had driven them to the cities in search of shelter and work. They were going to keep sheep, Sukri remembered. Clearly Grogan was beginning to put down roots and placing the group on active duty had unsettled him. Maybe it was his age, or something else, she wondered. Grogan the farmer, she thought with a smile and said, ‘It was going to end sometime, wasn’t it?’ She hefted the elderly AK47 about in her arms to ease her aching muscles. The cab was quite tight and, with the bag at her feet, it felt cramped.

They were supposed to seize the replacement manager to hold as a hostage so that he would become a bargaining chip. The opposition groups desperately needed some positive publicity. There had been a string of reversals and defeats in recent months, and the news had become unremittingly bleak. They had to do something to challenge the government and move the spotlight back to something more positive.

It hadn’t always been like this. In the early days they had some big success stories mainly because the government had been disorganised and badly led. The Emergency Government had come about shortly after the start of the Iran-Israeli war. Originally it had been all about whether they should use the UK’s small stockpile of nuclear weapons in the wake of the strikes on Israeli and American forces in the Gulf. By the time that a decision had been taken to launch a UK counterstrike the war was over. By then there wasn’t much of the Gulf left to fight over.

So, the Emergency Government continued in power as the country was caught up in the fallout of the global economic meltdown. It put the fallout of the 2020s’ pandemics completely in the shade. Much of the Gulf was put out of bounds because of radioactivity and would be for many hundreds of years, or so they said. With oil supplies down by almost a half the wheels of business ground to a halt. To have something to trade with the rest of the world, the government sold the dwindling supplies from home produced oil and shale gas from fracking.

In the early days following the end of the war it had been a complete car crash; a breakdown of law and order, rioting and food shortages. Then stories emerged about the special perks for those at the centre of government. It was as if the gravy train had never stopped and began to embrace a whole range of special cases—mainly the friends and relatives of those in power. Sullen resentment boiled over and was followed by determined opposition. Prosperity was no longer universal, whilst simmering dissatisfaction became widespread.

The first really serious public disorder was in 2032, provoked mainly by government incompetence more than as a result of a deliberate shift in policy. A spate of shootings by the security forces at demonstrations had been the catalyst. It had been a mistake to use troops for policing. Two weeks of rioting followed, and fresh martyrs were made every other day. The real problem was that there wasn’t enough to eat, and the people couldn’t heat their homes. The Government simply didn’t know what to do, so the hardliners won the day. The new policy was to impose law and order at all costs. Feeding the nation somehow seemed to come a poor second. Almost inevitably there were more deaths, and the radical opposition was born. That was when the troubles really began.

‘There they go,’ said Sukri. The lights of the manager’s car and its police escort swept on past on the road above them. ‘I thought there wasn’t supposed to be an escort,’ she said turning to Grogan.

‘Maybe their plans changed; maybe they got wind of something,’ he replied evenly. Grogan reversed the truck onto the farm track, and then edged carefully up onto the road. It was beginning to become awash with a steady flood of water, travelling around the bend in widening ripples and then sweeping down the hill. By the time it reached the floor of the valley the water would be a gushing torrent, making the road’s patchwork of poor repairs slippery and treacherous, sweeping all before it.

There was no need to turn on the truck lights. The night sight goggles made everything as clear as day, even if the occasional flashes of green letters and numbers were distracting. They were military issue and showed the speed, the relative angle of travel and altitude as well as a lot more irrelevant information. Looking to the side of the frames triggered the responses.

Grogan said he had more experience in using the goggles from the time he was in the Forces. Sukri didn’t entirely trust him to tell the complete unvarnished truth—anyway, not all the time. But she had never felt comfortable driving with the goggles. So that was why he landed the job of being her personal driver, as she periodically reminded him. She thought her comments were unremittingly funny whilst he felt that the joke was beginning to wear a bit thin.

The truck, an automatic, went through the gears slightly juddering as they struggled up the road, chasing after the convoy. They couldn’t afford to let them get too far ahead because the ambush site was close by. Equally they couldn’t risk being seen. Daylight was beginning to show over the hills, behind them. Soon it would be light enough for them to see clearly without using the goggles and be seen in return. The last thing they wanted was for a glimpse of them to be noticed by one of the drivers ahead in their rear mirror silhouetted against the rising dawn.

‘We’re coming to the straight bit now,’ said Sukri, ‘so slow down.’ The road had now reached the top of the ridge and was cutting through an old forestry commission plantation. Dark conifers reached high into the sky on either side. Thousands of acres of woodlands had been planted in the mid-20s as part of the National Plan against Global Warming. It was the rain that made them grow so fast.

‘I can’t slow down,’ Grogan replied. ‘I don’t want the light to show up behind me. Anyway, we don’t have the time.’

They couldn’t afford to be late. Being late would be fatal. Timings were the weak link in the plan that Liz and Steve had put together. Jon and Sukri had to stop the convoy from escaping back the way they came so timing was all that mattered at this stage. And it wouldn’t work if the manager and his guards were able to abandon the cars and escape over the moors. And there was the nagging anxiety of a drone jet being sent out. They would not have a chance on open ground. It would be all over very quickly.

The car lights ahead of them suddenly vanished in the far distance. Why was that? thought Grogan. He pushed the gas pedal flat to the floor and the truck vibrated as the engine began to roar. It was just too bad if they heard, Grogan thought, there’s nothing more we can do; we are committed. Then his anxiety returned, and he began to feel vaguely sick. No turning back now. As the truck raced along his mind whirled. They could have spotted them; they could have been clever, switched off their lights and turned off down one of those forest tracks they had passed; they could be waiting up; they could be calling in a hovercopter gunship right now or a drone jet…

‘Slow down, Grogan, you maniac,’ yelled Sukri as the truck lurched over a pothole, ‘you’ll wreck the tyres!’ In the distance they could just glimpse a distant red brake light as the convoy turned into the road down to the valley bottom. He cut the speed and let the truck drop back.

He could breathe again, and his detached inner calmness returned. ‘Did you tell them about the second car?’ he asked, his voice sounding to him strangely flat.

‘Yes, I used the texter when we set off; they should have got the message and be expecting them,’ she replied.

Dawn was beginning to light up the sky behind them; a flat narrow band of grey wolf-light pressed down by the lowering clouds. The clouds seemed to be bulking out in a large billowing intertwined mass. Maybe it would pass them by or maybe it would move onto the next set of ridges before the storm broke. The time to worry was when a chimney of air broke off from the main cloud bank and began to climb.

They were getting close to the ambush site. ‘Jon. let’s just go through it again,’ said Sukri. Grogan smiled to himself. She always liked to give the impression of having everything buttoned down. She liked to be in control. But the longer they lived together the more he understood that it was simply a front. So, he went through their list of actions. ‘We block them in and prevent their escape; you remain with the truck ready to assist with the extraction; I flank them from the moor and force them to surrender and take the Manager. You drive us out.’ It all sounded so very simple and reassuring and straightforward. So, what could possibly go wrong?

2. Nessa

She was waiting in the unmarked police car with Filip near the Hampstead Heath Overground Station, close to the Hospital. Nessa was in her early 30s, with a medium build and brown hair; she had learnt her trade in London with the Anti-Terrorist Branch. Following the 2031 war, they had merged with military intelligence, and she now worked with Filip. Generally, the days were full of mind-numbing surveillance, enquiries, and endless bureaucracy. Boredom was the real enemy. Every morning she woke up and questioned her own sanity for getting involved with all of this. After all she was still relatively young, she constantly reminded herself; and she could do something else. She could get married. Start a family. Get a new job but she never seemed to find the time, so she simply carried on in the same old rut.

They were in a government car. It was black and somewhat battered. There was a large dent in the rear fender, but it was quite obviously a police car because it wasn’t electric and didn’t burn propane gas or hydrogen. It was an old diesel, and much safer for all of that. There was no need to worry whether it would work because of the constant power cuts that dogged electric cars, making them difficult to recharge. The chaotic weather conditions meant that electricity supplies were unreliable. And no one wanted to drive about in a police car running on propane gas or hydrogen. Both were highly explosive and the last thing you wanted to power a car that might be hit by gun fire. So, despite its shabby and run-down appearance it was quite clearly a government car. And what was more that was obvious to everyone else as well, so it was really quite pointless having it for surveillance work. Still, you can’t change the world, she thought.

Across the road a collection of mini tractors and trailers, and men with rifles and shotguns were beginning to assemble. Men were sliding shotguns from their bags, breaking them, and cradling them over their arms; others had rifles. They were in rubber boots, a mixture of green and brown camouflaged jackets and an assortment of hats ranging from baseball caps to tweed peaky blinders. They were slowly gravitating towards the Heath proper in the light drizzle. It had been on the breakfast news. They were going to make a cull of foxes and wild dogs that were beginning to plague the area.

The packs of feral dogs had become bolder and had come down to Parliament Hill Fields from the Heath and attacked some youngsters playing near the shanty town at the foot of the hill. A young girl had died, and another was badly mauled. There had been some talk that the animal protectionists would try to disrupt the cull, but Nessa and Filip weren’t there for that. The cull was a pure coincidence, a pure accident of fate. Filip was due to meet a source in the café across the road. Calling it a café was far too grand a description. It was really just a large family house that had been hastily converted to sell real coffee at exorbitant prices to the North London elite. Real coffee was rare these days and very expensive.

It was Filip’s source—a small-time crook, hovering on the edges of radical politics. Filip had got to know him over the years. His tips never usually amounted to anything much. They seemed based on tittle-tattle and idle gossip but once or twice he had come up with something useful. Filip was three years younger than Nessa, but always managed to look much older as well as distinctly haggard. He was tall to middling in height, with a shock of blond hair but he always looked unkempt and neglected. The source had said that he had something valuable to sell. But then again that was what he always said, and it remained to be seen whether he had anything that would be worth the cost of the overpriced coffee. He had claimed that he was going to introduce them to an important contact who wanted to discuss something important, or so he said. Well, at least Nessa knew that it all was supposed to be important, so at least that was better than nothing.

‘I don’t think you ought to be going on your own,’ said Nessa, ‘it could be a trap.’

‘No; it was what I agreed,’ replied Filip flatly. He could be very stubborn.

‘You will be breaking the standing orders—no solo meets.’

‘We are already breaking the rules—we have told no one about this man.’

Filip knew it was his trump card; they could hardly now go back to the duty officer for permission to go to a meeting that was already scheduled to take place in the next fifteen minutes. They could hardly admit that they had been planning to break the rules