The Last Of The First (Halfhero Book 3)

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Grayling tapped some keys and a cropped image, showing only the warehouse itself filled the screen.

  "Sir, the bright white patch in the centre shows a source of heat. This warehouse is listed as unoccupied. If you look at this second image, taken by the same jet forty-three seconds after the first, you'll notice a slight change in colour."

  The president could detect no such change. He grunted again. He had found the grunt to be the single most useful sound he could make since taking office. Whenever he wasn't sure what was going on or couldn't answer a question, the grunt was a useful stalling tactic. If he followed the grunt with a pause during which he squinted at his questioner, he found they would often answer their own question.

  "The colour change indicates that the area has cooled during the preceding forty-three seconds. Such rapid cooling suggests an event involving intense heat now returning to ambient temperature."

  "An event involving intense heat?" Couldn't she speak English?

  "A flash fire or an explosion. Whatever it was, it happened at the same moment the trackers went offline."

  "Are you saying someone has blown up the titans?"

  "It's a possibility, sir, yes."

  "Jesus. When will this Air Commodore woman get there?"

  The Director of National Intelligence answered him. "Sir, she should be there now. MI5 can patch you through."

  The tall, thin man who had shown them in—what was his name? Jones? James?—had put on a headset and was speaking into it. He nodded at the president.

  "Air Commodore Bardock is on comms now, sir."

  Fiona Bardock reached the warehouse ten minutes after an army squad had secured the perimeter. The officer in charge waited as she jogged from the helicopter, then handed her a headset.

  "Ma'am, I'm Corporal Gregg. I have the president of the United States for you."

  She made no move to put on the headset.

  "Gregg, has anyone touched anything?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Stop calling me ma'am. Call me Bardock."

  She saw the moment of recognition on his face. Bardock was a legend in military circles. Her promotion to Air Commodore, shortly before her resignation, was unprecedented within the Royal Air Force Special Investigations Branch. It occurred just weeks after the capture of the world's most wanted terrorist. It didn't take a genius to connect the dots.

  Yes, ma'am, er, sir, um, Bardock."

  "That's better." She still held the headset. Gregg pointed at it.

  "Um, hadn't you better..? The president?"

  Fiona scanned the area in front of the warehouse and started walking. Gregg jogged to catch up.

  She stopped at the warehouse door. Without going in, she walked back towards the trees at the edge of the car park.

  "Where's the van?" she said. Gregg shook his head in confusion, then looked at the headset.

  "The president, ma'am, Bardock."

  Fiona removed her beret and jammed the headset onto her head.

  "Sir?" she said.

  The voice at the other end was instantly recognisable and unmistakably angry.

  "Well, you took your sweet ass time, Ms Bardock."

  "It's Mrs Bardock. My husband took my name. Please call me Bardock. How can I help you, sir?"

  "You can give me a goddamned update, that's what you can do. Bardock."

  "An update, sir?"

  "Yes."

  "No."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said no, sir."

  There was an odd sound through the headset. Fiona thought it might have been a grunt. She crouched down and looked at the pattern of tyre treads where the concrete began. She spoke as she walked back to the warehouse door.

  "Sir, I can't give you an update as I've just got here. The next hour is crucial in the search for relevant evidence. If I am to stand a chance of finding your missing titans, I need to work, and to work, I need to be left alone. I will be in touch when I have something to update you with. Goodbye, sir."

  She handed the headset back to a slack-jawed Gregg.

  "We're looking for a long wheelbase Transit," she said. "It was parked back there overnight, under the trees. According to the Met Office, it rained yesterday and part of last night, but it's been dry since around 5am. The tyre marks are fresh, and they're strongest where it came out onto the car park. It turned and reversed up to the doors. Look at the tread marks."

  Gregg did as instructed.

  "The left rear has a bald patch. You can see it here as it reversed. There it is again, faintly, leading towards the road. Wanli 215s. Not the cheapest tyre, but at the budget end of the market. And this set has seen better days. I think they'd struggle to get through an MOT. Where did the jet scramble from?"

  "Ma- er, Bardock, sir?"

  "Which RAF base was the jet from?"

  "Brize Norton."

  "Good. Get me the images from the flyby. The pilot approached from the east, so I want the images captured in the ten miles leading up to the warehouse. Not just the thermal images, get the standard photographs as well. We need to find that van."

  "Hello? Hello? Bardock?"

  The president looked around the room. Casey was studiously tapping something into her Globlet, and the live feeds from the Pentagon showed two deadpan faces. The president glared at the tall Brit, whom he suspected of smirking.

  "You—Jones. Did she hang up on me?"

  The tall man approached. "It's Jameson, sir. Er, Air Commodore Bardock is the most successful military investigator since our records began. She has unorthodox methods, but you will find no one more capable."

  "Excuse me? Did you say Bardock?" The interruption came from Roberta Grayling.

  "Yes, ma'am," said Jameson.

  "Mr President, Bardock is the best in the world at what she does. She has worked with our intelligence community on a few occasions, and she has proved indispensable. Charles?"

  The Director Of National Intelligence nodded. "She's the best. She just takes some getting used to."

  The president of the United States grunted again.

  "Jameson, get me some coffee."

  Jameson, Deputy Director General of MI5, smiled and left the room. He paused outside his office, where his assistant kept a jug of freshly roasted coffee at all times, then changed his mind and went to the awful machine in the canteen instead.

  7

  When Saffi had told him they'd be sitting in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the British Isles, Daniel had pictured the M25 at rush hour, eight lanes nose to tail, never getting beyond walking pace.

  The reality was different. Turning a full three hundred and sixty degrees, he counted twenty-seven vessels, but even the nearest—a fishing trawler—was too far away for him to make out the name on its side. He spotted a huge red prow in the distance pointed towards them.

  "That it?"

  Sara picked up the binoculars and took a long look at the approaching ship.

  "MV Liberace," she read aloud as she focussed on the side of the hull. "Yes, that's it. Undo a few buttons on your shirt, roll up your trouser leg and stick your thumb out."

  "Liberace?" said TripleDee, "Dinna tell me they named a ship after that piano-playing poofter?"

  Sara lowered the binoculars and waited. Eventually, TripleDee remembered she was gay.

  "Not that there's anything wrong with that, pet, I mean, I wasn't saying that, no, not at all. It's just, you know, that's what we used to call him when I was at school. I know better now. I'm not homophobic or nothing. It's just a funny name for a big old ship like that, isn't it? Isn't it? No, I suppose not, they could call it anything, why not that, eh? Yeah, now I think about it, it's a good name for a big, fuck off ship like that. I like it. MV Liberace. Yeah. Got a real ring to it, hasn't it? Liberace. Nice. Yeah."

  Sara winked at Daniel, who grinned at her, hanging onto the steering wheel as his newly emptied stomach hit him with a wave of nausea and dizziness.

  "Um," he said, pointing, "
are you sure they've seen us? That looks a bit close."

  They all turned to look at the huge ship bearing down on them. It looked unnatural, the containers on its deck sitting as high above their speedboat as if they were the upper floors of a tower block. Two cranes stood even higher. The windows of the bridge were just visible beyond the stacked containers, but it was impossible to see anyone inside as the sun bounced off the glass.

  "Is it even slowing down?" said Saffi, standing beside Daniel.

  Sara's phone beeped once with an incoming message. She tapped on the screen.

  "They see us, and they have slowed a little in preparation. There are sixteen crew on board, but only the captain, the chief officer, and the second and third officers know about us. The rest of the crew are performing an emergency pirate drill, which involves locking down key sections of the ship and hiding in a safe room. They are out of the way for the next twenty-five minutes. There's no margin of error. This has to work first time."

  As the prow got closer, blotting out their view of the sky, everyone was quiet. Despite knowing the captain had noted their position, they still tensed as the distance between the enormous vessel and their own tiny craft grew ever shorter, the rumble of its immense engines drowning out the cries of the distant gulls.

  When the Liberace was three hundred yards away, Sara told TripleDee to start the speedboat's engine, turn, and set them on an identical course to the approaching ship. At one hundred yards, he moved the speedboat wide of the red prow and watched as it came alongside, matching its speed as closely as he could, the smaller boat skipping across the wake. On the deck, a crane designed to load containers swung out, and a wooden pallet hanging from an iron hook lowered towards them. By the time it reached the level of the boat, it was swinging wildly. Sara raised a hand, and it stopped. When she lowered her hand, the pallet matched her action, and Daniel and TripleDee manoeuvred it into position until it was straddling the back of the small boat.

  They loaded bags and personal possessions, then climbed on. Daniel was hanging back until last, but TripleDee put a hand on his shoulder.

  "Daniel, you look like shit, pal," he said. "I think I saw your spleen come out the last time you puked. You go ahead. I'll take care of this."

  Daniel didn't argue. Once he was on the pallet, Sara threw a rope to the Geordie below.

  "Loop it under your arms," she called.

  Triple Dee put the rope around himself. "Okay," he shouted, "Ready?"

  "Ready," confirmed Sara.

  TripleDee knelt in the bottom of the speedboat, raised his fists over his head, and brought them down with all his enhanced strength. The bottom of the hull splintered like matchwood and water gushed in. He stood and kicked down with his heel. That was enough to cause the first hole to widen. The entire hull cracked and, within a second, TripleDee was up to his knees in water.

  "Shit! Pull me up!"

  Sara waved at the distant crane, and the winch above reversed its engine. Triple Dee hung underneath them, giving some colourful descriptions of how cold and wet parts of his anatomy were. Below him, only a cluster of bubbles gave any clue as to the location of the sinking speedboat.

  The captain of the Liberace was waiting for them. He watched as TripleDee took off the rope. The pallet reached the deck seconds later.

  "Welcome aboard. I am Captain Andreas. I will be your only contact. You were very clear about the need for discretion."

  "Agreed," said Sara. "And thank you."

  Captain Andreas tilted his head in answer. The money they had promised him, half of which was already in his account, would—even after paying his officers a generous bonus for their silence—allow him to retire a decade earlier than he had thought possible. The olive groves of Crete were calling, and he looked forward to getting fat and old there.

  He led his unorthodox visitors to the stack of six hundred containers that made up the bulk of the Liberace's cargo. He stopped in front of a container at the bottom of a stack of seven, and removed the large padlock on the door.

  "I will lock you in," he said. "Any member of the crew seeing it unlocked would check otherwise. You understand, yes?"

  Daniel fixed the captain with a baleful stare. "We can get out if we need to. You know that, right?"

  Captain Andreas swallowed. Daniel was the biggest man he had ever seen. He glanced over at the second man, who had punched a hole in the bottom of a boat with his bare hands. He nodded.

  "Uh, there are torches just inside the door. I have connected a generator inside. You'll need these keys."

  Sara took the keyring. "Thank you, Captain. I'll let you get back to your crew."

  She led the way into the dark container. Each of them carried some bags and joined her. When they turned, Captain Andreas was silhouetted in the doorway. It was the last time they would see any natural light for four days. If everything went according to plan.

  The captain closed the door, and left them in darkness.

  Sara clicked on the torch and shone it around the container. It was empty apart from three more torches in the corner. Saffi, Daniel and TripleDee picked them up.

  Sara opened a door at the far end, revealing a similar door leading to the container beyond it. She unlocked it. Inside, Daniel could hear the faint hum of the generator. Sara was shining the torch onto the side of the container. She leaned over, there was a click, and lights flickered on overhead.

  They were standing in a dormitory, four beds laid out, a locker next to each. Two areas at the far end had been partitioned off. TripleDee walked over and peered into each.

  "Showers and a shitter," he said. "Very nice. Extraction fan, too. Good thinking. I had chilli sauce on that kebab last night, and me ring's on fire."

  "Lovely," said Sara. "Shall we?"

  Daniel took Saffi's hand as they followed Sara and TripleDee into the next container. Saffi squeezed his hand, leaned up and kissed him.

  The next container was a living area. There was a large table, a galley kitchen, and a desk with a powerful computer. Daniel tapped the spacebar, and the screen lit up with the familiar Glob homepage. Even after its late founder had been denounced as a traitor, the world had decided it was too familiar with the words Glob, globbing, Globule, and Globlet to change, even if Titus Gorman had held the world's financial system to ransom. Among many of his users, Gorman’s actions had raised him to the status of a folk hero.

  "Wifi," said Daniel. "Spectacular." He typed in a few words and a news site opened. DOW JONES PLUMMETS AS US REACTS TO LOSS OF TITANS. PRESIDENT INSISTS THEY WILL BE BACK AND 'GREATER THAN EVER.' BIGGEST MANHUNT IN HISTORY UNDERWAY.

  "Right," said Daniel. "Better hope this works, then."

  He walked up to the door at the end of the third container and opened it. They had bought four containers, each loaded onto the Liberace according to their instructions. So far, everything looked good in the first three. But if the fourth container didn't contain the items they had specified, and overpaid for, the plan would fall apart faster than a self-assembly wardrobe.

  He felt around the wall of the container until he found the switch. The lights flickered on revealing the fourth forty-foot container. Daniel stepped inside. Saffi was next, then Sara. TripleDee was the last to enter, looking at his mobile phone. "What's the password?" he said. "I thought, since we've got a few days, I might binge on Jason Statham films." He looked up from the screen, taking in the contents of the last container. "Oh, thank fuck for that," he said.

  "Come and help with the bags," said Daniel, stepping back into the next container. "If we're the subjects of the biggest manhunt in history, we'd better get started, don't you think?"

  8

  Three hours after leaving Luton, the blue car with the red door left the motorway, following minor roads through countryside unlike any Tom had ever seen. It was flat around Luton. Now, Tom stared out at a blanket of greens, yellows, and browns undulating around the narrow strip of road. Unfamiliar town names came and went. Kidderminster, Tenbury Wells
, Ludlow, Craven Arms.

  He looked at the two girls again. He knew their names were Kate and Shannon although neither of them had spoken. Names were unnecessary. 'Kate' and 'Shannon' were arbitrary labels.

  Tom. Even his own name sounded alien. He pictured the letters. T, O, M. Tom Evans. Written on his water bottle at primary school in permanent marker, then in exercise books and at the top of test papers. Now, this method of identification and separation had lost much of its meaning. Names came from his old life where there were fences between people. There were no fences between Tom and the girls. He was still him, but he was also them.

  What the hell does that even mean?

  He looked at sheep grazing in the fields, watched a tractor climb a distant hill. He thought about his mum and dad. Phil and Melissa. Their names were still necessary. Tom didn't have the same connection to them as he did with the girls. He would call them soon, let them know he was okay.

  Tom's thoughts drifted around the confines of the small car, as did theirs. Kate was from Ealing, Shannon from Barnet. He knew they had both felt changes begin over the last months, both dreamed dreams they couldn't remember. And then they’d dreamed one they couldn’t forget.

  They'd both woken up in the early hours knowing it was time. Time to leave. Time to arrive.

  The car stopped once, at a small town at the foot of a range of hills. They ate sandwiches in a tiny courtyard garden at the back of a cafe. It was busy with tourists and walkers, some of whom whispered comments to each other about the teenagers sitting at the corner table. Their silence was unusual, although they looked happy enough. It wasn't until they had paid their bill and left that a woman nudged her own teenage daughter, plucked the mobile phone out of her fingers and said, "Did you see that? Not a single electronic device between them."

  "Weirdos," said the girl, and snatched back her phone.

  Tom and the girls went to an outdoor equipment shop on the main street. They picked out a large tent, sleeping bags, portable stoves, plates and cutlery. The manager, seeing the growing pile of equipment, devoted three-quarters of an hour to them, making sure they had everything they needed for a camping trip. It had been a slow day in the shop, and when the till rang up a bill of nearly two thousand pounds, the manager beamed at his young customers.