“Are we sure?”
“You have all the information, sir. Every poll shows the way forward.”
“Have the people really got such short memories? I mean, surely there must be people out there, voters, who won’t take kindly to me going after a bunch of heroes who won a war?”
“I would have thought that you might be a little more eager for this, sir,” Dennison said quizzically.
“This is all getting a little too public for my taste, Dennison. Such things as these should be handled a little more quietly, do you not think?”
“I agree, sir, but unfortunately, this particular cat is out of the bag, so to speak. Might I be so bold as to suggest that we need a little distance now from the past, from past prime ministers and past heroes. We cannot afford to be tainted by association.”
A television was playing on mute in the corner of the room. Summer Sloan was staring into the camera with earnest eyes and the makeup of a mature and serious journalist rather than the flippant frothy look she usually favoured.
“Is that bloody woman ever off the screen these days?” Clermont asked exasperatedly. “I mean, how are we supposed to distance ourselves from the past while she keeps on bringing it up? Have you seen the latest polls?” he demanded as he thrust some papers forward towards his aide.
“A slender lead for the opposition, nothing we cannot turn around, Sir, I assure you. Perhaps…”
Dennison’s gaze turned to the television screen and the woman on it.
“You can’t be serious.” Clermont laughed.
“You should take a look at her numbers, sir. She is rising fast in the public’s eye and her viewing figures are sky-high right now.”
“Have we really come to this? Whoring ourselves out on trash TV?”
“There are worse things, sir. Losing an election, for one.”
That comment landed.
“You’re sure that we go public to this extent? That we go after the Queen’s Guard, paint them as public enemy number one and throw Rosemary Williams under the bus too? Bury our own party from the past? Isn’t this all a bit risky? What if we lose the support of our members? I’m just worried that when the dust settles, we’re going to be left standing all alone.”
“You have allies, sir, powerful ones at that.”
“You’re talking about Cynthia Arrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is a hell of a big risk to take, Dennison, aligning ourselves with a woman who was once seen as a terrorist.”
“That was 20 years ago, sir. It is all right here in the data. The voters of today are far more savvy when it comes to looking beneath the surface. Young voters have little trust in government, any government – actually, in any structured organisation. They believe in sourcing their own views, their own information, and right now, their own opinions. The Queen’s Guard are being viewed now as a militant arm of a dictatorship, government-sanctioned assassins, while Cynthia Arrow is becoming a martyr. People are starting to flock to her and her cause, a warning message about our cosmic visitor, one that went unheeded and perhaps for which we are now paying the price.”
Clermont thought about his aide’s statement and found that the man was right. If he wanted to hang onto power, then he had to side with the rising tide. If that meant dumbing himself down for television interviews with halfwits, or aligning himself with Cynthia Arrow, then so be it.
Of course, he still had the burning question over his father’s death to be answered, and while he was an incredibly well-educated and civilised politician, one who’d risen to the very top of his chosen profession, he was still the son of a dead man.
The message now from the government was simple: no one was above the law and there would be warrants issued for the remaining Queen’s Guard members. The once heroes were now wanted criminals, murderers; they would be hunted and brought to justice, one way or the other.
chapter 27
REARRANGING THE PIECES
The docks appeared deserted as the beat-up nondescript van rolled into view. Unbeknownst to the feathered seagulls, it was carrying the five most wanted criminals possibly in the country’s history.
Link drove the van on a wide arcing circuit of the docks, checking for potential witnesses to their arrival, and only once he was satisfied that they were alone did he park the van inside a large open warehouse that had seen better days.
“No CCTV anywhere,” Crimson confirmed as he opened the van’s rear doors and they all stepped out into the foul-smelling air.
CJ was the last to get out, and only then once Crimson had done a sweep of the warehouse to double-check that they were alone. While all of the others were able to blend into the background with clothing, the overly tall green reptilian alien could do very little to hide his sheer size.
“You sure we’re alone?” Jamie-Lyn asked nervously as she peered out from under the oversized hoody she wore.
Crimson answered by favouring her with a withering stare.
“I was only asking,” she responded, lowering her own gaze. “Forgive me if I’m not quite used to being a wanted criminal like you.”
The last few days had been spent crisscrossing the country using back roads and avoiding civilisation as much as possible. The radio had been their only link to the outside world. The news reports had first been filled with the story of their wanted status but had then worryingly quickly become a story about their guilt.
Jesus had become enraged at the lack of balance given to their story and just how swiftly it appeared the public had turned against them. His father had helped mastermind the war against SOUL and it would appear that his legacy had been forgotten.
Crimson hadn’t appeared to be bothered by the public’s betrayal, his own cynicism, and indeed, criminality, protecting him against any sense of disappointment.
Meanwhile, Jamie-Lyn’s own media inside knowledge of just how a public bandwagon could get rolling left her unsurprised at the shift in feeling towards a team that had once been heroes and were now wanted criminals.
Link as the outsider had, likewise, not been affected. He was a soldier used to seeing just how civilians would lose their stomach for war. But his great help to the somewhat depleted team had been his anonymity to their enemy, or at least so they hoped.
Link had slipped out of Crimson’s bolthole to procure the van that they had travelled in; the others had been left behind wondering if he’d ever come back.
For her part, Jamie-Lyn felt that the younger man had a genuineness about him and she was glad to be proven right when he did indeed return with a vehicle and a plan.
It was quickly decided that they could not trust any assets that Jesus could bring to the table. His government contacts all had to be assumed compromised as yellow-bellied politicians scrambled to save their own necks.
They also could not trust CJ to use any of his abilities. While it would be expedient to cover ground using his teleporting skill, it would undoubtedly leave a very visible trace.
Crimson had his own bag of tricks, but again, they couldn’t trust that he wasn’t compromised.
With her having little in the way of a tactical larder to call on, they were left with Link to trust, but to his credit, he had so far come through.
CJ was wearing a large poncho pulled over his head while heavy clothing obscured his green skin. Once they were safely hidden inside the warehouse, he was able to remove it and stretch himself back to his full height from the stoop he’d been affecting at Crimson’s suggestion.
Link led them across the rotting floor until he reached an inner door to a private room.
The door here and the frame all looked as rotted out as the rest of the woodwork, but as they reached it, Jamie-Lyn could see that it was a façade. The wood had been coloured to look faded and rotten but it was in fact firm and sturdy.
Link reached out and lifted a flap, exposing a carefully concealed keypad.
“This yours?” Crimson asked.
“A friend’
s,” Link answered as he punched in a number coordination. “I just hope she hasn’t changed the password.”
He was answered by the locks disengaging and the door opening.
“Well at least something’s going our way,” Link said with a relieved sigh as he stepped inside; the others started to follow.
Crimson suddenly reached out and grabbed Link from behind. Jamie-Lyn was both shocked and not surprised to see a blade in Crimson’s hand now pressed to Link’s throat.
“What the hell are you doing?” she exclaimed.
Link held his hands up in surrender as Crimson pulled him back and then forced him inside using the younger man like a human shield.
“What’s in here?” he demanded with menace, the knife tip pressing hard enough against Link’s throat to draw a thin droplet of blood.
“Crimson, stop!” CJ ordered, but his words were ignored.
“We don’t know this guy and we’re just supposed to trust him now?” Crimson responded as he forced Link into the room while peeking out from behind.
“He’s in this with us,” Jesus said as they all stepped inside. “You know that.”
“I don’t know shit,” Crimson snarled back.
“Never a truer work spoken,” Jamie-Lyn quipped.
“See, it’s empty,” CJ said as they all moved inside.
The room was large with what looked like large metal locker doors lining the walls and locker-room benches in the centre of an otherwise empty room.
“Take it easy, man,” Link said, his hands still up as Crimson turned him around to check every corner of the room. “See? No one’s here, just us. Now get that bloody thing off me.”
The younger man’s words were careful and patient, but Jamie-Lyn sensed, for the first time, a feeling of anger in his usually placid and friendly demeanour.
Crimson released his grip and shoved Link forwards, creating space between them. He slipped the blade back into the folds of his clothing like a magician and then folded his arms across his chest with his usual arrogant grin etched across his face, almost daring the younger man to make a move.
“Whose place is this?” Jesus asked as he closed the door behind them, sealing them all in and out of sight.
“I told you, a friend,” Link replied as he moved to the metal door wall.
“What kind of friend?” Jamie-Lyn asked.
Link pushed the nearest door in and then it popped open. He pulled the inner tray out, extending it into the room and exposing a wire rack holding multiple weapons and equipment.
“A very useful one,” he answered with a wide grin.
Crimson’s eyes widened like a kid on Christmas morning while Jesus looked appreciatively at the goods on offer. The two men started opening other doors and making an inventory of what they had to work with.
CJ looked more disapprovingly at the firearms but even he had to recognise their usefulness.
Jamie-Lyn followed Link as the man moved to a smaller door, which was more akin to a safe. He opened it and started to check through the various stacks of money and paperwork.
“So who owns all this?” she asked him as she drew close.
“An old friend. Well…, acquaintance is probably more accurate. I don’t think that Mac does friends; think of her as the female Crimson.”
“Where is she now?”
“No one knows,” Link answered as he stopped what he was doing for a moment to ponder. “A couple of years ago, she went out on a mission and no one saw her again.”
“Mission? She was a… mercenary like you?”
“It’s okay, it’s not a dirty term.” Link smiled. “Yeah, she was in the business. Hell, best in the business if you ask me. Our paths crossed a few times. I worked a job with her team once in Belarus – good guys, good team. Last I heard, she was working a search and rescue gig. Some rich guy built himself an island paradise that went offline. Mac and her guys went in to investigate and, well, that was the last that anyone ever saw or heard of her.”
“She wouldn’t mind us being here?”
Link pulled up his sleeve and showed her a long vicious-looking scar some six inches long running up his arm.
“That looks like it hurt,” Jamie-Lyn mused.
“Damn straight it did. I took a machete blow instead of Mac once. Damn near lost my arm doing so.”
“So she owes you?”
“That’s the way it works. To be honest…” He paused as he looked around the untouched room. “…part of me was hoping to find some sign that she’d been here, that she was still alive, but…, well, maybe no one’s invincible.”
He returned to sorting through the safe’s contents. He pulled out several thick wads of euro notes, quickly thumbed through them before stuffing the cash into a zip up pouch bag. He also took a phone and a small black book.
“Mac was always a little old school,” he said as he opened the book and started to leaf through it. “The phone’s a burner, but I’ll only trust it the once. We don’t know who’s listening out there.”
“I think we do.”
“Fair point,” he said, grinning again in his good-natured way, which couldn’t help but make her smile a little in spite of their current predicament.
Jesus had found several heavy-duty holdalls, and along with Crimson was loading weapons, ammo and equipment into them.
“I like this guy’s taste,” Crimson shouted over to Link as he turned a large hunting knife over in his hands.
“Girl’s,” Jamie-Lyn called back.
“Then I admire her taste,” Crimson corrected himself.
“So what now?” CJ asked a little timidly, and Jamie-Lyn was surprised at his lack of leadership.
“We need transport,” Jesus said as he hefted a bag onto one of the benches.
“I’m on it,” Link responded, busily dialling a number from the book into the phone.
“Cash too,” Crimson added.
“Got it,” Jamie-Lyn said as she brought over the money pouch and tucked it into a second bag, which Crimson put down on the bench next to the first.
“You’re really sure about this guy?” Crimson asked the group quietly now that the four of them were close together while Link was talking on the phone across the room.
“He has given no cause to distrust him,” CJ announced grandly.
“I concur,” Jesus agreed.
“Besides, we’re not exactly flush with options right now, are we?” Jamie-Lyn added.
“I do think that we should pause for a moment and consider our plan of action,” Jesus said as he tried to regain his in-charge role.
“Personally, I’m terrified of slowing down,” Jamie-Lyn admitted. “This whole thing is shit scary, and the second I stop and think about it, I think I might just go insane,” she finished, her voice cracking a little.
CJ touched her arm gently and she was both glad of the contact and suddenly aware of the huge gulf that had grown between them in the intervening years since she had left the team. She had once been his closest ally, his closest if not only friend, and yet now they were virtual strangers.
So much had happened in only a few days that her head was spinning and threatening to spin out of control. She had been a reporter with a successful, if not now slightly underwhelming, career. Now she was a fugitive wanted for murder, with a revived terrorist on her tail out for revenge. It wasn’t just her present life that had been destroyed. Judging by the public mood, her previous one also now lay in ruins.
“Everything we ever did,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Everything you guys did for the country. Marshall, Bull, Doc too. It’s like none of it ever happened.”
“Screw ’em!” Crimson spat.
“The people are just… misinformed,” CJ offered. “They will remember. Our enemy has just temporarily blinded them; they will see the light again.”
“You have a lot more faith than I do,” Jesus said. “Jamie-Lyn’s right. Everything my father built has been torn down in just a couple of day
s. Years of work, all gone up in smoke, and now we’re being branded as the bad guys.”
“Like I said, screw ’em. We saved the bloody country; we were the ones on the front line standing between the public and the terrorists who would murder them in their beds. And what do we get in return? We get stabbed in the back, so fuck the lot of them. I say we finish this. We find out what’s hunting us, then we kill it. Next up, we put that bitch Cynthia Arrow in the ground once and for all.”
“Then what?” Jamie-Lyn asked.
“Then I disappear again and this time I don’t come back.”
“Okay,” Link said as he rejoined them. “I’ve got us a boat, safe passage across the Channel – no checks, no passport control, strictly off the radar.”
“Okay then.” Jesus nodded. “We’ve got cash, we’ve got equipment, we’ve got weapons. Good job, Link.”
“Don’t mention it,” the younger man replied, but his cheeks blushed a little.
“How long till we leave?” Crimson asked.
“A while, which is good. There’s plenty for me to do here before we go. Mac’s the sort of woman who always leaves a stocked larder. There’s plenty of equipment here I can use, the sort that won’t be traceable until long after we’ve gone. So if we want to try and find this Swedish guy, I’d better start looking,” Link said, checking his watch. “I’d say we’ve got about nine hours to kill.”
“That’s my kind of time.” Crimson grinned.
----------
Summer lay in a thin soft dressing gown wearing nothing underneath after taking a shower in the palatial dressing-room suite that came with being number one at the station.
She held a champagne flute in one hand, drinking from it slowly and savouring the exquisite vintage as well as her newfound position, which had risen her above everyone else.
The tap on her door was light but insistent as she sat with her feet curled up under her on the long plush sofa that she’d had brought in when she’d moved to the premier dressing room.
Of course, Bruce Manners had been apoplectic when he’d been informed of the switch, but to the victors went the spoils, and right now, Summer was the station’s big gun.
Capes Page 39