Cooper still doesn’t know where the school is now. The Yanks will have told him about Groombridge, but they never learned about Fairlawne, so it should be safe.
Unless I tell him. Maybe that’s what he’ll do — wait until he’s bored with me and then torture me to get the location of the school. Rich pickings for him there.
I may have to work out a way to kill myself. But I’m not there yet.
Not quite.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Wilkes and Tariq to start arguing.
“I’ve been trained for this, mate.”
“In peace time. I led the resistance against the American Army in Iraq. I have experience that you don’t.”
“Of getting everyone under your command killed.”
“John delegated command to me if he didn’t make it.”
“You aren’t the boss of me, mate.”
“I’m not your fucking mate.”
And so on until eventually Caroline shouted: “Oh why don’t you just whop your cocks out right now and we can see who’s biggest?” which made Jack snigger but didn’t exactly help.
“Listen,” I said to the council of war gathered around the fire. “We all agree we need a clear chain of command. Yes?”
Wilkes, Ferguson, Tariq, Jack and Caroline all nodded. Green just stared into the flames.
“And we all agree that if my dad were here, we’d be happy to let him lead us because of his experience and training?”
Again they all nodded.
“So we should make finding him our first priority. We know he was on his way to Hammersmith to meet up with Caroline. For some reason he never got there. We have to track him down. We can’t win this fight without him.”
“Lee, we have no idea where he is or what happened to him,” said Tariq. “I want to find him as much as you do, but we have no leads and we don’t have any more time. Jane is on the inside and God knows what they’re doing to her. We have to get her first.”
“Don’t you think I want her safe?” I countered. “But we have no chance if we keep fighting amongst ourselves like this. We need a strategy and a leader. Dad’s the only one we would all agree on.”
“We could vote,” said Jack.
“What?” asked Wilkes, incredulous.
“He’s right,” said Caroline. “We could vote. Elect a leader.”
“I won’t take orders from him,” said Tariq, more apologetic than angry.
“Then we don’t vote for a leader,” continued Jack. “We vote on a plan. Chances are we’re going to need to break into at least two forces anyway. As long as each group has a leader who agrees to the plan, we’re fine.”
“I’m not going into battle with a strategy voted for by children,” said Wilkes.
“We may seem like children to you,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice, “but between us we’ve seen more combat than you.”
“Do you have a better suggestion for breaking this deadlock?” asked Caroline.
Wilkes considered for a moment, then shook his head. “What do you think, Pat?”
“If we can come up with a plan we all agree on, it sounds sensible to me,” said Ferguson.
I leant over and whispered in Jack’s ear. “Well done, Your Majesty, you just convened your first Parliament.”
WE TOOK THE discussion inside then, to one of the lecture halls of the old college. Ferguson drew a map of the enemy stronghold on the whiteboard. His attention to detail was impressive. He picked out the fences, minefields and gun towers, as well as various internal details such as where the children were being kept, and the location of the Lords’ brothel.
There came a point where the level of detail began to disturb me.
“Question,” I said as he picked out Spider’s sleeping quarters. “How the hell did you get inside, collect all this intel and then get out again without being caught?”
“With great care and a little help.”
“From?” I tried not to sound too suspicious, but failed.
“Once the lorries arrived at Westminster I got straight out and ran inside, shouting that I needed the loo. If I’d hung around, they’d have realised I wasn’t their man. I’d been in the Palace of Westminster once before, on a tour, so I vaguely knew where I was heading. I made straight for the Lords.” He looked expectant, waiting for us to realise something. When none of us did, he said: “The brothel.”
“Jesus, Pat,” said Wilkes.
“If I’d tried to hang around making sketches and stuff, I’d have been caught,” Ferguson explained. “The only chance was to get in and out as quickly as possible. So I went straight to the brothel and told the guard on the door that I was a new recruit and I’d been waiting all week for some loving. He let me in, no problem.”
“You sick…” began Caroline.
“Let him finish,” said Tariq.
“There’s about twenty women in there. Well, women and girls. They have these kind of bunks set up on the benches. Some of them got up and came over to me, but most just lay there hoping I wouldn’t pick them out. I pushed the eager ones aside and picked out the youngest and most frightened girl there. I figured maybe the confident ones might not have been exactly trustworthy. The girl led me to a little nook behind the Speaker’s Chair where there was a mattress.
“Her name was Tara.
“And there, in total privacy, where no-one would disturb us, I got her to tell me everything she knew about the snatchers’ operation. Layout, routines, names — everything. I got lucky picking her; she paid attention.
“When she’d told me all she could, I went out the main doors again. I found an office overlooking the river — luckily it was low tide, so I climbed out and down to the shore.”
He noted my look of disbelief.
“I used to be a rock climber, okay?”
I held up my hands. “Ok.”
“I was inside for forty minutes at the most. Then I waited ’til nightfall, found an eyrie in one of the buildings on Parliament Square, and spent a day mapping the external defences and noting their patrols.
“Big Ben still chimes, you know. All their scheduling hangs off it.
“Happy?”
I nodded. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, and went back to giving us the lowdown.
IT WAS SUNDOWN again before we all agreed a plan of action. After that there was nothing to do until morning. Tariq came and found me as I lay on a hospital bed, failing to sleep.
“So what do you think?” he asked as he sat on the next bed.
“I think it’s a crazy plan, but it just might work!”
“Ha, yeah, reckon that’s about it.”
“What do you think, Tariq?”
He bit his lower lip and held my gaze. “I think it’s the best we can do in the circumstances.”
“But…?”
“But I wish John was here. What do you think can have happened to him?”
I shrugged. “God knows. Caroline says he never reached them, so somewhere between Thetford and Hammersmith something went wrong. As soon as we’re done with the snatchers, I’m going to retrace his route. For all we know, he could be lying in a ditch with a broken leg or something.”
“Why not go now?” asked Tariq. “We can handle the assault. You go find your dad.”
I regarded him coolly. “Still don’t trust me in a fight, huh? Still trying to get rid of me.”
He hesitated a moment, choosing his words carefully. Then he said: “Do you remember when we rescued Jane back at Groombridge, the day John was shot?”
I nodded.
“You were… I don’t know what you were like. Those Yanks were shooting at you and just walked towards them like you were bulletproof.”
“So?”
“You’re not bulletproof, Lee. And neither am I. I stood with you, followed your lead because I had no choice — it was either that or leave you to die. But I was sure we were dead men.”<
br />
I shook my head, unsure exactly what he was getting at. “We weren’t though,” I said. “We won that fight.”
“God alone knows how. We should have been killed a dozen times over that day. Luck like that doesn’t hold, Lee. Sooner or later it runs out. You acted like a mad man. That’s fine if it’s only your life you’re risking. But it was mine too.”
“What’s your point, Tariq?”
“My point is that tomorrow you’re going to lead a team of children into battle against the fucking SAS and I want you to realise that you’re not invincible. If you go wading in there like the Terminator, it’s not just your life you’ll be throwing away.”
“Did I ever tell you about Heathcote?” I asked. Tariq shook his head. “He was one of my school mates. The Blood Hunters held him captive during the siege. I took a knife and slit his throat just for a chance to get close to one of the bad guys. Sacrificed him in cold blood. I’d do that a hundred times over if it meant winning.”
Tariq stared at me, his face a mask. I couldn’t tell if he pitied me or feared what I might do. Then he stood up and walked away without a word.
I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep.
But the sound of Heathcote’s screams, and the hot slick feel of blood between my fingers, kept me awake ’til dawn.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT BEGAN TO snow heavily as they split their group into three.
The younger kids who had escaped Hammersmith with Caroline were taken back to St Mark’s in the removal van, driven by one of the Rangers. They had no place in a battle, and they’d be safe back at the school.
Lee, Jack and Ferguson had taken off on horseback at first light, heading for the Thames, their saddlebags heavy with ordnance.
Everyone else had piled into the three school minibuses Tariq had used to bring the team from St Mark’s. They headed west, to Heathrow.
The ranks of Caroline’s little army had been swollen by a bunch of the older kids from the convoy they’d attacked. There were nearly fifty of them now. Wilkes, who was in joint charge of this part of the operation alongside Tariq and Green, had insisted that there be an age limit. They’d fought over that for an hour until they’d agreed that any child under thirteen was not to be involved in the fight.
The other bone of contention had been firearms. The team from St Mark’s had brought crates of various types of gun with them, and plenty of ammunition. Caroline felt strongly that every child should be given a gun, but no-one agreed with her. Too risky, they said. More chance of them shooting each other than the bad guys.
In the end they’d compromised. Only those kids who’d been trained would carry machine guns and grenades, which meant all the St Mark’s lot. Her lot would be allowed handguns if they were sixteen or over. The younger teenagers could have knives, clubs, bats or that kind of thing, and they were to stay behind the kids with guns, as a second wave to mop up stragglers. Wilkes was unhappy with this compromise, but Lee and Jack insisted that the children be allowed to fight. It was, Lee said, their fight in the first place.
Caroline was relieved when Lee left. There was something behind his eyes that she didn’t trust. Right up to the moment she met him again she had been unsure what she would say.
“Hi Lee, long time no see. By the way, I executed your dad the other day.”
“Wow what a coincidence bumping into you! ’Cause, you see, I bumped into your dad a few days back. Yeah. Blew his brains out.”
“Lee, I don’t know how to tell you this, but your dad’s dead. The churchies got him.”
That last one had been her favourite. Blame it on Spider, get Lee fired up for the attack, make it personal. But it turned out he and Matron were together now (and by the way, euw, she was like, ten years older than him) so he had a personal stake in the attack already. Anyway, if she told him that, he’d press her for details and she was sure he’d have worked out she was lying sooner or later. Being caught in a lie like that would be worse than just staying silent.
She told herself that she was being silly, that he was an ally and a friend. But she looked into his eyes and was absolutely certain that if he knew what she’d done, he’d kill her on the spot.
So she’d played dumb, denied all knowledge.
“No, no-one approached us. We left ’cause Matron told us where the school is now and we decided to risk the journey.”
She crouched behind the enormous wheel of a 747 on a Heathrow runway, wet through and chilled to the bone, but she counted herself lucky to be there. Lee had believed her and had decided to go looking for his dad only after they’d brought down the snatchers. Plus, he was off with the Rangers leading the other pincer of the attack, so she didn’t have to be around him. More importantly still, the other kids who’d witnessed John’s death weren’t around him either. She’d not yet had a chance to take them to one side and brief them, tell them what had happened, make them swear to keep it secret. She’d have a chance to do that now, though, before they met up with Lee again.
Assuming he didn’t die in the coming battle. Which, she realised guiltily, would solve a lot of problems for her. For a moment it occurred to her that if things went her way, she might get the chance to shoot him in the confusion. Friendly fire. No-one would ever know it had been deliberate. She pushed the thought aside, pretending she hadn’t had it, shocked at herself.
But she had to admit, it would be convenient.
She banished the thought and focused on the task at hand. In the near distance stood a row of lorries. She counted thirty-four in total. All had the familiar red circle of the church sprayed onto their sides. They were neatly lined up in the shadow of an enormous hangar. This was their target.
Caroline watched Tariq and Wilkes as they ran from car to car through the car park that sat between the taxiway where she crouched, and the hangar.
There was one guard patrolling lazily in front of the huge sliding doors that once allowed airliners in for servicing.
When the two of them were at the very edge of the car park, Wilkes drew back the string on his bow and sent a thin shaft of wood straight through the guard’s heart. He dropped without a sound.
He and Tariq broke cover, racing for the small, human-sized door that sat in the middle of the plane-sized one. When they got there they stood on either side of it, ready to deal with anyone who came out. Wilkes waved to Caroline, who in turn waved to the kids and Rangers sheltering behind the concrete wall at the end of the line of planes. As per their orders, they didn’t run out. Instead they walked en masse, with Green and two Rangers at their head, older kids at the front, younger ones at the back.
When they reached her, Caroline joined them at the front. The army of children walked towards the hangar, silent and full of purpose. When the whole group stood united, she, Wilkes, Tariq and Green checked their watches and began a countdown. Then Green and Wilkes broke right while Tariq and one of the other Rangers broke left, slipping around the edges of the hangar with five armed kids in tow.
Caroline took up a position beside the door, alongside a Ranger, waving the remaining kids back against the hangar doors. The snow fell silently as they stood there, breath clouding the air, waiting for the exact moment. Eventually, after ten minutes had passed, Caroline raised her right hand and counted down from five with her fingers. When the last finger made a fist, she took hold of her machine gun, stepped back from the hanger door and, in tandem with the Ranger whose name she still hadn’t bothered to ask, kicked it open and went in shooting.
The second they burst into the hangar, Caroline realised they’d made a massive mistake. All their planning had been based on the idea that the kids would be sleeping on the cold floor of the cavernous, empty space.
But in the centre of the concrete expanse stood the biggest plane Caroline had ever seen. A guard was already running up the staircase to the door in its nose. It was the only staircase running up to the plane — the doors at the midpoint and rear of the plane were
closed.
Underneath the fuselage, Caroline saw Wilkes, Tariq and their teams bursting in from the two rear doors, similarly amazed at the scale of their miscalculation.
The kids were on the fucking plane.
Caroline was closest to the moveable metal stairs and she put on a burst of speed as she registered the situation, racing to get within firing range before the guard could make it inside the plane and close the door. He had made it as far as the top step before she managed to get a bead on the man, and sent a stream of bullets thudding into him. The guard cried out, spun and toppled down the stairs, a dead weight and an obstacle.
Caroline kept running, aware of the kids streaming into the hangar in her wake.
“Don’t let them close the door,” came a distant, echoing yell from Tariq.
“Well, dur,” she muttered as she raced towards the metal stairs.
As she reached the foot of the stairs she jumped over the still twitching corpse of the guard she had shot and began pounding up towards the door, which began to swing closed ahead of her. The men closing it were well protected behind its bulk, and she’d climbed only a few steps before she realised there was no chance at all of reaching the door in time, or getting a clear shot at the men who were closing it.
She dropped her gun and it swung free on its shoulder strap as she reached into the pocket of her fur coat and pulled out a grenade. She bit the pin and pulled it out with her teeth, never breaking her upwards stride as the gap between door and fuselage narrowed. She took three more steps and then stopped, drew back her arm and threw the grenade as hard as she could towards the tiny gap. It soared through the air and straight through a space merely twice its width.
The door slammed shut amidst a chorus of shouts from inside. There was a loud clang as the door lock was engaged and then immediately disengaged. The door began to swing open again, ever so slowly.
Then the grenade exploded, blowing a huge gaping hole in the side of the plane, sending the door, and various body parts, flying over Caroline’s head. The shockwave picked her up and tossed her backwards off the staircase into the freezing cold air high above the concrete floor, which rushed up to greet her as she screamed.
School's Out Forever (afterblight chronicles) Page 73