BLITZKRIEG IRELAND 2016
SHORT FICTION BY GARY J BYRNES
Copyright 2011-2014 © Gary J Byrnes.
The right of Gary J Byrnes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright & Related Rights Act, 2000. All rights reserved.
In this work of fiction, the characters, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or they are used entirely fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This ebook is freely distributed for your personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be re-sold but may be given freely to other people as long as it is not edited in any way. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
www.GaryJByrnes.com
@garyjbyrnes
Thriller Box Set, 3 full-length thrillers by Gary J Byrnes, now available.
Contents
Blitzkrieg Ireland 2016, a very short story
About the author
Other titles
Connect
Blitzkrieg Ireland 2016
Gary J Byrnes
It was a dull warm day in April, and the clocks were set to Berlin time. The Kommandant of the Central Bank of Ireland stood before the long window on the top floor of his Brutalist pile and gazed east, down the grey River Liffey and into Dublin Bay, where water and sky met in a fuzz. He searched the clouds anxiously, checked his watch.
It was a hundred years, almost to the day, since the Irish had risen, brought destruction on their capital while their masters floundered in the mud of France. The so-called patriots were hated by the populace. Why rock the boat? Some of us are doing well.
The air conditioner hummed.
‘Some things never change. Now, where are they?’
The full wall digital display churned out numbers and symbols. The Euro was dying and the shocking red pixels could lie no more, the spinmeisters had tried every trick, every crazy scheme. Debt piled upon debt piled upon debt. The names of the instruments was changed, changed constantly, but the underlying reality could not be transmuted. The house of cards had collapsed. Simple physics, really. But the new currency would soon be unveiled, finally turning lead into gold.
Tiny dots formed at five thousand metres and the Kommandant allowed himself a smile. His assistant entered the office with a silver tray and two double espressos.
‘Anything?’
The Kommandant inhaled the coffee as blue sky broke to the east and said ‘They’re here.’
Lots of lovely little dots.
Six RAF A400M tactical transport aircraft, four F-35 stealth fighters and a dozen helicopters flew unhindered over red and white chimneys, up the river to the port. King William flew the lead transport, smiling as he did his duty for himself and his riot-torn country. There was no resistance to the attack formation, as the Irish Aer Corps relied on UK radar and satellite data and had been supplied with dummy images since midnight. Two fighters peeled away from the attack force and dropped gentle sparkles towards the port and the oil tanker sitting low in the water. Then the jets accelerated and screamed over the Central Bank, south to hit the army garrison in Rathmines, then on to destroy all helicopters at the Aer Corps base in Baldonnel.
Black explosions. Bad noise, rolling across the city.
The remaining fighters watched over the slowing, circling, fat-bellied transports, each loaded with one hundred storm-accountants from the 1st Combat Wing of the European Central Bank. Armed with sub machine guns, laptops, calculators, asset seizure orders and impenetrable contract documents, their role was to aggressively take control of all the Irish assets that had been put up as collateral for European bailout funds. The funds were a contrived, fractional fantasy and the bailout a disaster. But these truths were irrelevant. This was about the rule of financial law and the protection of the bondholders, the hedge funds and the German and French banks that really mattered. We want the assets. We want it all.
The sound of the tanker’s death reached the office as a low rumble, a column of oily smoke filled the morning sky. It was ironic that the last time this part of the city had been bombed from the air was during a Luftwaffe attack in 1941.
‘Can we trust the British, Herr Kommandant?’ asked the assistant.
‘Of course, Gunter. There is your proof,’ he gestured at the chaos unfolding across the city. ‘They can only continue to fight their endless war by hiring out their remaining assets and selling their military hardware to the highest bidder. Some would argue that it has always been so.’
‘And the Irish?’
‘The military and police paychecks come from Frankfurt. So they are fine. We will need them to maintain order. The police will get double overtime to once I assume command of the State and declare Emergency Law. The politicians? Well, I don’t know if anyone can truly understand them. They have been paid off and offered powerless but well-salaried positions in Brussels and Frankfurt, as has always been the case. Those that decline our offer will be fed to the population.’
Gunter gaped. The smoke from the tanker obscured a quarter of the sky. Nearer, the transports lazily circled the Irish Financial Services Centre like sharks while the storm-accountants drifted slowly to ground under pinstriped parachutes. The helicopters hovered, then veered south. The transports followed, crossed the river towards Government Buildings.
Looking down at the street made little point from the top of the Central Bank, they were just working ants below, so the Kommandant looked to the screens to see the breathless breaking news. There was some panic, but calm resignation too. The fluoridated water supply had numbed the peasantry into submission, exactly as imagined by Nazi scientists in the 1940s. Since the Bubble Times, each of Ireland’s economic shocks had been greater than the last. Until, finally, the idea of the European Central Bank repossessing a country using military force was now broadly acceptable. The Greeks had fought harder but they fell first. For the core countries which had insisted on the centralisation of European power after The First Bond War, Greater Europe was taking shape. The European Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda controlled the media. Between and within the gameshows and scripted 'reality' programming, the populace was relentlessly bombarded with the mantra that managing debt was the most important shared task and that their elected representatives had failed them by obstructing this.
So Greater Europe’s western flank was now being secured, along with Ireland’s fish and her cattle and her gas and her debt slaves. Then attention could focus to the east. Russia. We need more living space.
They stood and watched as each objective was taken and then took a long conference call with Berlin, Frankfurt and Paris, which was mainly concerned with short-term bond yields.
The numbers quietly marched across the screens.
Some gunfire. Nearby. The Kommandant raised an eyebrow, but he always did this.
‘And Shannon Airport?’
The assistant checked his tablet computer. ‘The American garrison has taken it, not a shot fired.’
‘Good. Good. I want preliminary audit reports from the banks and the asset management agency on my desk in the morning. Tonight we will dine with the mission leader, an actuary from Dortmund.’ The Kommandant was framed by the window then, a horrible, smoking masterpiece as the evening sun toasted the Dublin Mountains. Hellish. ‘It’s time to broadcast my assumption of command. To the media studio. And then time for a brandy, perhaps?’
A very loud explosion then and the office shook. A long crack in the window. Dust and choking smoke and screams and shrieking alarms.
‘What was that?’ Then, quietly 'Sheisse.'
The assistant tried to contact security on his headset, failed, brought the g
round level cameras onto the screens. At the rear of the building, by the Temple Bar Sealed Zone for the city's homeless addicts and alcoholics, the fortified ramp into the basement. A scorched and smoking cave now.
‘There!’ cried Gunter, pointing to a screen which showed fuzzy armed men enter the cave, firing calmly into the void.
The Kommandant lurched towards his desk and scrambled at the bottom drawer. It slid out as he grabbed the Napoleon bottle and struggled with the cap. There was shooting within the building and another explosion. The tv blahed about a large British aircraft that had come down on Croke Park, smartphone images of Hill 16 and feral kids poking at smoking wreckage. There was also a report on the assassination of two bankers on Merrion Street, but these events seemed distant and unconnected as the two men cowered and gulped their brandies and listened to the shooting.
And when four of the fuzzy men with guns came to take hostages before they would level the building with an ANFO-nitromethane truckbomb, all the Kommandant could ask was ‘Who?’
‘The IRA. Old, new, real. Call us what you will. We’re just looking after our investments. Can’t be having everything wiped out by your New Deutschmark. Surely you can appreciate that.’
‘But you were gone away!’
‘Ha. We have been reawakened, reanimated. Events, you might say. Up! On your feet the pair of you.’
‘What do you want?’
‘We’ll make a deal. Down the road, maybe. Or you may be hearing truckbombs in Frankfurt. Now get everyone out of the building.’
The terrorists set up a pair of remote cameras and a Tor-cloaked web transmitter. Then they filled a bag with laptops, smartphones and documents from the Kommandant’s desk as the trembling man spoke quietly into his internal comms mic, in English and German. The men posed by the picture window for SnapChat and Twitter, AKs pointed at their hostages’ heads, streaming the whole show onto the web, live for a gaping planet.
Twenty-two minutes later, the explosion was heard as far away as Glendalough. The ducks there shrugged.
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.
The Bible, Proverbs 22:7 (New International Version)
THE END
###
About the author
GARY J BYRNES (Dublin, Ireland) is an Amazon number one bestselling thriller writer whose stories are edgy, controversial page-turners. Nominated for the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award with acclaimed Limerick crime thriller PURE MAD, published in 2009. Has also published atheist/DNA conspiracy thriller THE GOD VIRUS (2011), THE DEATH OF OSAMA BIN LADEN - AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY (2012) and THE WRITER AND OTHER STORIES shorts collection (2013). Has also written a series of kids' thrillers about witches and magic in Ireland, WITCH GRANNIES. VAMPIRE STORY is his debut short film, as writer and director. Gary actively promotes secularism in SECULAR IRELAND. Currently working on a New York thriller about food, art and Nazis.
Gary says: “Stories are what make us human. The beauty about writing fiction is that there really are no limits. Fiction is so powerful that the world is controlled by it, from the Bible to political manifestos. But my fiction is about escape, entertainment and excitement.
“Pure Mad, my crime thriller, is set in Limerick, Ireland and was nominated for the UK Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger. I've since revisited the work and published The Author's Cut. The God Virus is a wild conspiracy thriller about an atheist forensics scientist who gets hold of DNA samples that raise huge questions about the origin of humanity, the power of religion and the ultimate questions of life, gods and where we're going as a species.
“I try to focus on building strong and interesting characters and letting them breathe in plots that have no limits. My stories are epic, controversial and, I hope, like nothing you've read before. If you like my work, please give it a rating and review wherever you find it.
“What's most important to me is that you're reading, so good job you!”
Gary J Byrnes, February 2014
Discover other titles by Gary J Byrnes
The X-Games
Ireland Trilogy
9/11 Trilogy
History Trilogy
Pure Mad
The God Virus
The Death of Osama bin Laden - An Alternative History
The Writer and Other Stories
Connect with Gary
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GaryJByrnes
Friend me on Facebook: https://facebook.com/GaryJByrnesThrillerWriter
Subscribe to my blog: https://garyjbyrnes.blogspot.ie/
Find me on GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/GaryJByrnes
Visit my website: https://www.GaryJByrnes.com
The End