Both vehicles stopped. The driver of the pickup jumped down. There had been a blur of saffron robes before the sickening impact and he was calculating how the killing of a monk might affect his next incarnation. He'd probably come back as a dung beetle.
The pickup driver came face-to-face with a man in a blue jacket. The logo on his pocket matched that on the side of his lorry. The man bent down to inspect a dent in his tailgate. He pointed back at the pickup, which was more severely affected. Behind a V-shaped dent, the bonnet had been pushed up and smoke curled from the damaged radiator.
Both drivers turned towards the park to see the young monk strolling among the trees. They looked at each other, at their vehicles, then back at the unconcerned victim of the accident. Without a word, they got back behind their respective wheels and drove away.
11
Saffi found Daniel in the fourth container. Speakers all around the forty-foot space made sure it was never silent, and the constant murmur of voices covered the monotonous drone of the Liberace's engines. Hours of downloaded educational podcasts and TED talks were being fed to the occupants of each of the nine bathtubs lined up against one wall.
He turned as she approached and put his arm out, drawing her close.
"I'm not sure there's any point in it," he said. "The podcasts, I mean."
Twenty-four hours had passed since Daniel, Saffi, Sara, and TripleDee had brought the titans and Abos onboard. They were somewhere between Ireland and America. So far, everything had been quiet. No dramas. No boarding parties. No jets, no helicopters.
"It can't do any harm, though, can it?" said Saffi. She listened more closely to the nearest speaker. "Although I'm not sure what good Sherlock Holmes stories will do them."
"Hey, knock it off. That was my choice. When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Class. Come on."
"Well, yes, but what about Jane Austen? George Eliot? Dickens?"
Daniel pulled a face. "Boring."
"Boring?! Dickens? We need to talk."
"Count yourself lucky," said Daniel. "Sara stopped me including Monty Python and classic Doctor Who episodes."
He smiled at her, and she tutted, then grabbed his face and kissed him. The kiss lasted longer than he expected, and Saffi's hands began to move over his body before she pulled away, flushed.
"It's not easy sleeping in a dormitory and having no privacy anywhere," she said.
"It'll only be a few days," he said. "Unless they track us down first, in which case, we won't ever see each other again."
He looked down into the nearest bath tub. The body growing there was recognisably human already, and about the size of a six-year-old. The blood they'd brought from the latest raid Abos had made on the London hospital's stock had been distributed randomly. They had no way of knowing what gender each of them would be, and no way of telling which embryonic form was Abos.
"Ow," said Daniel, as he registered a punch from Saffi, which hadn't hurt in the slightest.
"Prat," she said. "Don't say things like that."
"Sorry," he said, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing it. “You almost swore then."
"You drove me to it."
"What about talking dirty? Think you could give that a go?"
"Daniel Harbin, get your mind out of the gutter for five minutes, would you?"
They walked the length of the room, checking on each tub. There was nothing they could do but wait. Sara was dealing with the stress by burying her nose in her ebook reader. TripleDee was, as he had threatened, bingeing on Jason Statham films.
Daniel took a deep breath. There was one issue he and Saffi hadn't discussed since he'd first told her, a month earlier.
"Um," he began, then stopped. Hard to know how best to broach the subject of the one hundred and eight children he had only recently discovered he had fathered. Or, rather, that his sperm had fathered, when it had been used to help one hundred and eight childless couples become parents.
"Your hundreds of children?" prompted Saffi, knowing where he was heading.
"Er, yeah. Although it's only a hundred and eight children."
"Only?"
Daniel coughed then turned to look at Saffi. She was smiling and shaking her head.
"I'm teasing," she said. "I've been thinking about it, too. It must have been a big shock for you. To go from being childless, to have a vasectomy, then to find out... well, I can understand why you've needed time to get used to the idea."
"Thank you."
They had reached the end of the container. Daniel leaned over the phone that was playing the podcasts. He had five minutes before episode one of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy began.
"It's not even as if they're children anymore," he said, steering her away from the phone and back along the line of baths. "The youngest of them, according to Palindrome's report, turned seventeen last month. The oldest will be nineteen just after Christmas. They're grown up."
Palindrome, the anonymous contact who was queen of the internet in Daniel's view, had uncovered evidence of Station's—or, rather, Daniel's—sperm donation.
"Really?" Saffi squeezed his hand. "Were you grown up at seventeen? Or nineteen?"
At that age, Daniel had been transforming from an awkward, socially inept teenager with a weight problem to an awkward, socially inept teenager with superpowers.
"Nah," he said. "I bet you were, though. Probably taking a management course or something."
Saffi went quiet for a moment. Daniel reviewed what he knew about her. She had been a teenager studying in England when her father had been killed in the Middle East.
Shit. Idiot.
"Um, anyway, what I'm saying is that they don't need me swanning in, saying, hi I'm your real dad, did any weird powers kick in when you grew pubes?"
Saffi had a habit of not speaking until she was sure of the best way of expressing her thoughts. Daniel was determined to learn to do the same. One day. Eventually.
"Many halfheroes did not survive adolescence, did they?" she said.
He shook his head. "I know what you're thinking, Saff, but Palindrome ran searches on every name. All the kids are alive, and there are no hints of any special abilities."
"Oh, well thank God they're healthy. But how would you know if they had any powers? They would hide them, yes, just as you did?"
"I guess so. But their parents wanted them. They would know if something was wrong. These babies must have seemed like miracles to them. It was different for me. My mum treated the cat better than she treated me. I was an embarrassment. She hated herself, and she hated me."
"I'm sorry, Daniel."
"Don't be. But the parents of these kids... well, they love them, right? They will notice if something's wrong. Even if most of the kids hid what was happening, others would talk to their parents. I don't think they have any abilities, Saff. I hope not."
They were at the door to the living area container. Saffi put a hand to Daniel's cheek.
"Do you want to see them?"
"Part of me does, I suppose. But most of me... no. I don't want to mess anything up for their mums and dads. That wouldn't be fair. I don't know if the kids have been told anything. What right do I have to walk in and... no. No. I've never been their dad. They've got dads. Proper dads. I'm just glad they're okay, they're loved, you know?"
"Yes," said Saffi. "I know."
"And you think it's all right? If I don't want to meet them?"
She put her head on his shoulder. "I think it's a decision no one else can make for you, Daniel. And if you think it's the right decision, I will support you."
He rubbed her back as they held each other. It was the right decision. It would be selfish to do anything else. Yes. It was the right decision.
So why did he feel like shit?
12
Bardock stood on the jetty for the second time in twenty-four hours. The search for the van had led to the biggest tailback ever seen on the M4, but
no arrest had been made. The target must have been one of the vehicles peeling off onto the A and B roads. Which made their job that much harder. The first few hours had been crucial, and they'd blown it.
Jerry Sotterly. Handyman, surfer, small-time dope dealer. The team on the phones to local towns had made a list of vans matching the description and got in touch with all of their owners. All but one: Jerry.
Bardock walked the wooden boards and examined the mooring posts again. There were no clues as to the identity of the boat she was convinced was there when the titans arrived. The thermal images and photographs from the flyby had missed the jetty, so she had nothing solid on which to base her hunch. Nothing apart from that mark on the floor where the door at the rear of the warehouse had been opened, and the broken and bent vegetation suggesting at least two people's progress through the woods since the last rainfall thirty hours ago.
And the feeling in her gut that she was right. That feeling had never let her down. It was her body's way of letting her know that her subconscious had assembled information and built a hypothesis.
For her, Jerry Sotterly was only a distraction. No one else, from the president down, could see this, and she wouldn't waste time trying to persuade them. They had a target, and the boys at the top liked a target. But Jerry was all wrong, and by the time they found out, the titans could be anywhere.
Jerry lived in a village four miles from the warehouse. He was well-known and his van was a familiar sight in the area. His drug-dealing activities were minor - he bought for his own use and sold some to his mates. His last words to his girlfriend yesterday, before setting off, had been, "Pack a bag. When I get home, we'll fly somewhere hot."
Hardly the words of a master criminal. Every other aspect of this crime had been planned by someone thinking a dozen moves ahead. Jerry didn't fit into that picture at all.
She looked at the depth of the water lapping around the jetty. Bardock was no sailor, but any boat moored here would have to be small. A small boat meant a small fuel tank, limiting the distance it could travel.
She picked up her radio.
"Gregg?" she said. "Get onto the local harbours. I want a list of places a small boat could reach from—"
Gregg cut through her instructions. "Ma'am, er, Bardock, sir, they've got him."
"Got who?"
"Sotterly. And they've recovered the titans."
"On my way."
Bardock tucked the radio back into her pocket and started the climb through the trees back to the warehouse.
Recovered the titans? I doubt it.
Jerry Sotterly was going through the most terrifying day of his life.
He'd followed the massive bloke's instructions to the letter. Steve had said to get off the M4 after a few junctions and use smaller roads. He'd done that, and found a garage with a jet wash to give the van a good clean, including the number plates, which belonged to Jerry's girlfriend's car. That was the only crime they could accuse him of. That's what he kept telling himself when the shit, an incredible amount of heavily armed serious shit, hit the fan.
Jerry followed the minor roads all day, always choosing an alternative route over the quickest, finding himself driving through picturesque villages. He had a phone full of dub tracks, enough dope to get him through a week, the sun was shining, and there was another five grand due when he got home. Even the first five grand would cover the holiday he'd planned.
He avoided London, driving east until he could head north through Kent, joining the M25 to pass under the Thames through the Dartford Tunnel before getting back onto smaller roads and heading north.
Jerry slept in the van the first night, in a lay-by outside Peterborough. He set his alarm for four o'clock.
The roads were deserted when he set off again. He watched the dawn bleeding warm, rich colours back into the fields and hedgerows, and he smiled. A beautiful day and no mistake. He saved his first joint to accompany the coffee and bacon butty he enjoyed at a truck stop at 6am.
Steve had said he could get to the meeting point any time that day. Someone would meet him. His destination was a car park on an industrial estate just outside Edinburgh. Even allowing for his circuitous route, he would be there by lunchtime.
He never made it to Edinburgh.
A police motorcyclist radioed in his number plate as the road Jerry was following cut alongside the A1 for a few miles. The number plate wasn't registered to the van, but that wasn't unusual. Anonymous white vans had long been a favourite with burglars. The fact that the number plate belonged to a Nissan Micra bought in Newquay raised some flags. When the owner of the Micra was confirmed as Linzi Harperton, who shared an address with one Jerry Sotterly, the traffic police headquarter's computer did the digital equivalent of jumping up and down, letting off firecrackers and yelling, "WE GOT HIM!"
Jerry was forty miles south of Edinburgh when he heard the first helicopter. His third joint of the day was on the go and he was taking long draws on it in between bites of a flapjack and swigs from a bottle of ginger beer.
He only became concerned about the first helicopter when it was joined by a second. Even then, he wasn't overly worried. They were coming closer, sure, but the odds they were after him were astronomical. Even the mild paranoia of a habitual dope smoker wouldn't allow him to believe anyone would send helicopters after Jerry Sotterly.
The sound of a third helicopter made him narrow his eyes, lean forward, and peer through the insect-splattered windscreen. The first two choppers sounded normal, a distant fubaduba fubaduba fubaduba. This was different. It was much lower in pitch, with a repetitive thumping note to its approach, which Jerry heard as muthafucka muthafucka muthafucka.
He was craning his neck to look out of his window when he turned a corner and nearly ran straight into the roadblock.
Jerry had only ever seen a roadblock on TV. They looked like they meant business in the movies: cars, vans, and lorries blocking the whole carriageway, a dozen armed officers staring down the telescopic sights of nasty-looking weapons. There would be a grizzled alcoholic detective with woman trouble and a grudge standing at the front, a big pistol in one hand, the other held up, palm out. Jerry had always enjoyed those scenes. So clichéd. So Hollywood. He suspected a real roadblock in Britain would be two fat blokes in high-vis vests, a Ford Mondeo parked across the road and a plastic triangle saying Police: Stop.
The high-vis jacket was the only detail Jerry got right.
It took a long 1.96 seconds for his brain to react to the situation and send an urgent message to both his feet, which responded by stamping on the brakes so hard that all four wheels locked. The van slid to a stop in a cloud of smoke.
Fifteen yards ahead of his stalled vehicle was a roadblock Hollywood would have rejected as over-the-top. Three forty-foot artic lorries in a row blocked not just the road, but the pavement on one side and a hawthorn hedge on the other. Blue and white striped barriers came next. Crouched behind them were thirty armed officers in helmets and bulletproof vests. The dark, big guns they carried, and the practised, professional way in which they were aiming them at Jerry were bowel-looseningly terrifying.
A plain-clothes officer wore the high-vis vest, but she wasn't grizzled and—judging by the way the handgun she was pointing at Jerry's face didn't wobble a millimetre—wasn't an alcoholic either.
"Jerry Sotterly," she shouted. "Get out of the van. Keep your hands where we can see them."
His brain was still slow to respond. The words Jerry and Sotterly seemed familiar, particularly when used in that order, but he couldn't process why. Then the un-grizzled non-alcoholic officer screamed, "Do it now!" and his body bypassed his brain entirely. His hand pulled open the door, his legs shuffled him along the seat until he half-stepped, half-fell out of the van, and he lay down on his front.
"Ow," he said, as his forgotten joint squashed against his face and burned his cheek. He raised his head and spat it away. That was when he saw the muthafuka helicopter. It was a massive, long, military gr
een job with two rotors thudding away. Four ropes hung down from it, and figures with guns strapped to their backs were abseiling down.
"What the fuck?" gasped Jerry. He heard running footsteps. A vehicle behind his van screeched to a halt, a door was flung open, and more heavy boots approached. A pair of shoes approached from the front and one of them ground out his discarded joint. He looked up to see the pistol-carrying officer. She was still pointing the gun at his head. It was all very unfriendly.
"Look," he said, "I've got five joints in the glove compartment, and there's an ounce of resin in my pocket. It's for personal use only, I swear."
"Don't try to be funny," said gun-woman.
Jerry frowned, his brain still on a temporary leave of absence. He hadn't been trying to be funny. Then he heard the back doors of the van being opened, and he remembered.
It's a misunderstanding. They'll have a look inside and they'll let me go. They'll have to. It's nothing dodgy. They might think I'm weird, but they can't arrest me for that.
He heard a metallic sound.
They're unscrewing the milk cans. Great! They'll know it's all a mistake.
"It's all a mistake," he said to the gun-woman. He tried his most charming smile. He had always had a way with the ladies. Her eyes flicked down.
"Say one more word, and I'll kick you in the face."
Oh.
"Target confirmed, repeat confirmed."
The shout came from the back of the van. The voice was American. Jerry wondered what had been in that last joint. Perhaps this was a movie after all.
"How many?" This from a second American voice.
After a pause, the first voice shouted back. "Nine. That's all the titans plus The Deterrent. We got 'em all, sir."
"We'll chopper them back to London, then they can be flown back home. I'll inform the president. Good work, soldier."
The Last Of The First (Halfhero Book 3) Page 6