Keep Calm

by Mike Binder

  Adam reacted in a spark of rage, firing twice at the hidden sniper. He heard an instant groan. He’d hit him. He wasn’t sure if he had killed him or not, but he’d been hit. He brought his aim back toward Harris and fired. The bullet missed its target but caught Dorman in the chest. A wet pop sounded out as his sternum cracked. He spun to the ground next to Gordon’s body. Harris and Peet hesitated long enough to grant Adam another shot. He hit Peet squarely in his good shoulder. Tatum slung the rifle over his back while rising to his feet. He pulled out the Magnum and marched dead ahead to Harris, blasting bullets through the crackling air as Peet painfully loped away to the safety of the woods.

  Adam came within twenty feet of Harris, ten feet from Gordon’s lifeless body. He was good and ready to avenge his father-in-law. He had the jump on Harris and he knew it. He stopped firing and moved slowly toward him. He wanted to be right up close when he fired on him, exactly as Harris had just done to Gordon, as he did to Richard Lyle.

  Harris stood his ground and didn’t say a word. He smiled in a demented way that told Adam there wasn’t a chance in hell that he would drop his weapon. Adam was once again about to fire when someone shouted out.

  “Metropolitan Police! Drop all of your weapons! Now!” It was a young woman, small, maybe midtwenties, with a badge around her neck on a chain and a handgun that seemed to Adam to be as big as her whole arm.

  “Drop both of those weapons now, damn it! I mean it! Drop them!” Adam wondered who the hell this little thing with the big Scottish voice was but also realized in the same instant that the Heaton man knew exactly who he was dealing with and obviously had no use for her.

  Harris turned and started firing away at the young woman, and in his ruthless abandon he got under her skin. She ran for cover but fell onto the grass at the crest of the hill. He reset his aim and was about to fire off another shot, but he was too late. Adam had put a hole the size of a large fist into the center of the back of his grimy red head. Harris buckled to his knees and fell face-first into the grass, loudly coughing up blood. Just seconds later he was good and finally dead.

  Steel peeked over the ridge and knew exactly who had saved her life. It was the American, Adam Tatum. Adam had no inkling as to who the young Scottish woman was. He just knew well enough to take the few seconds of confusion he had purchased to run quickly away into the relative safety of Dorrington’s woods.

  ON THE HUNT ■ 10

  Steel heard shots fired from the west. She heard Edwina Wells scream out. She was racing through the forest after the American, chasing him around and through each and every clump of trees and stretch of bog, staying right on his tail, in and out of the lush woods, chasing him hard, up and down the rolling moss and vine-laden ground. She wanted to turn back and help Edwina but didn’t want to lose Tatum. She chased him with every ounce of energy she had. He kept looking back, thought for sure she would give up. He was wrong.

  Edwina called out again. Steel stopped now, had no choice. She had to go back. Edwina Wells was her mentor, the biggest supporter she had had in SO15. She couldn’t leave her alone out there. Tatum would have to wait. She watched him sprint into the far side of the forest. She turned back to the sound of Edwina’s shouts and caught sight of a real-life nightmare bounding toward her, down the winding tractor road.

  Eleven rabid dogs, running at her, full pace. Peet, out of breath, in the distance, was bloodied and mangled but happily watching from a rise in the road. His wicked grin told the tale. He had let them free to feast on the first thing they could find.

  Steel turned in a panic, ran back into the woods, and tore through the scrub and the bramble over a pile of dead trees, down into a soggy brush-covered valley, the dogs tight on her trail. Her lungs were spent, her legs were aching, and there was sharp pain in her feet, but the fear of death powered her forward as she ran back up another wooded hill with the pack of miserably tempered hounds now snapping their jaws at her heels.

  At the top of the hill she fell. The dogs attacked, eleven at once in a frenzy. She curled into a ball. She covered her face as they bit and clawed and jumped up on top of her. This was the end, she thought. Such a horrible way to die: torn to ragged bits by animals. She flashed quickly on her mother, on her father, on Georgia. The dogs barked and bit and tore into her clothing. She felt blood on her back. Her skin had been ripped. Her right leg. A bite there had broken skin. It didn’t stop. A pummeling of teeth. Gnashing teeth. Stinging. Biting. Pulling. The constant roar of barking, the disgusting rain of angry canine saliva washing over her, slapping her, washing onto her arms and her face. She was crying now, wishing it would end, wishing they could somehow get to her heart and just tear it out and be done with it.

  A gun fired. Several shots. In a flash the dogs were off her. Gone. Just like that, it was over. She looked up. Tatum, from the bottom of the hill, had shot over the pack and was waving them down to him, goading them, yelling at the top of his lungs.

  “Come on! Go on, you ugly fucking mutts! Get the fuck off her!” He had saved her life a second time. The dogs did exactly as he ordered. They angrily chased toward him. Their downhill run surprised him—they moved faster than he thought they would. He turned and ran but they were on him now, and as he sped through the thicket of vines and stumps he tripped as well. His rifle flew to the ground as his body landed flat on a bed of mud.

  The dogs pounced. They tore into the American, who didn’t have the time to curl into a ball. Steel watched from the ground in horror as they chewed into him, as they’d done to her, only worse. She tried to stand but her legs were too beaten, too soaked in blood and wrenched with pain to respond to mental commands. She wanted to pass out but knew if she did, if she ever woke, she’d find the dogs gone and the American’s chewed dead carcass.

  Somehow she got to the bottom of the hill, to his rifle. She picked it up and fired into the pack of insanely feeding dogs, praying she didn’t hit Tatum. She killed two dogs. They dropped like sacks of flour. Then she wounded a third. The rest of the pack finally got the headline and were gone in a lick, racing away through the silent trees.

  Tatum stirred. He looked over and saw Steel. He was bitten badly, but he could move. He stood. She was about to pass out. He knew it. He wanted to thank her, but the badge on the chain around her neck flashed the reality to him that he had to go. Had to get back to his wife and his children.

  Steel wanted to command him to halt as he scuttled off, but she didn’t have the energy or the vocal strength to speak. She collapsed onto a moss-covered stump. She tried to right her broken breathing as she watched the American limp his bitten body up the hill, disappearing off into the forest.

  * * *

  THE AIR WENT suddenly quiet. The branches on the trees gently sashayed with the wind in what seemed like a natural reset. The dogs ran in their miserable parade somewhere off into the distance, their surly din growing quieter and quieter until they would have been a dark memory were it not for the blood and the shredded clothing, the burning ripped skin on her arms, legs, and back.

  She sat still for several brittle minutes. Her breathing settled. Her body was beaten, but the wounds weren’t fatal. The bleeding wasn’t constant. She’d survive, she thought. There wasn’t time to think about much more. She saw through the trees onto the tractor road as Peet pulled up in the Mercedes and a younger man, the sniper from the woods, limped into the vehicle, his clothing painted in blood. She stayed hidden in the brush and watched as they drove away, a broken duo.

  A few minutes later Edwina Wells called out again from somewhere in the shrouded distance.

  * * *

  STEEL SPENT HALF an hour roaming through the darkening woods searching for Wells. She kept her weapon at the ready for whoever returned, be it human, dog, or anything else. She came upon Wells at the crest of yet another damp hill, seated, spent, leaning quietly against a tree.

  Wells smiled when she saw Davina. The veteran detective waved peacefully as Steel trudged her way up the incline. When she g
ot to the top Steel could see that Wells had been shot. Her chest was liquid black, her shirt soaked with blood. She smiled wearily once more at the young prodigy, and as her body bled out she nodded softly, then closed her eyes and died.

  ON THE RUN ■ 11

  Adam thanked God when he got back to the lodge that Kate and the kids were in the car, apprehensively packed and waiting, ready to go. He was a mess. He knew it. He had horrible news to impart, but it all had to wait. They had to leave immediately. There was once again no time to explain anything to anyone.

  Kate was speechless. He looked like he’d been fed through a shredder. His hands and his face were covered in blood. He was limping, soaked in sweat and mud, thoroughly out of breath. Little Billy saw him and instantly started crying. His daughter felt his pain all over her own body. It was the worst sight any of them had ever seen. It had taken all of the dark, scary, miserably horrible moments of the last days and made them all seem like picnic memories. He stumbled to the car, fell into the backseat, and screamed at Kate to start driving—immediately.

  “Where’s my father? What’s happened?”

  “He’s fine,” he lied. He had to. There wasn’t time to let her grieve; it wasn’t fair to tell the truth.

  “Where’s Poppa?” The kids were in a raw form of shock, also afraid to speak, afraid to ask anything they instinctively knew they didn’t want the answer to.

  “He’s back there. Just drive. He’s gonna meet up with us later. It’s fine. I was attacked by the dogs.”

  Kate looked into the rearview mirror as she pulled past the main house onto the long drive out to the road. She saw only her young son, leaning over the far backseat to look down sadly on his blood-soaked father, who struggled for air, struggled to form words.

  “Keep driving, Kate, whatever you do, whatever happens. Don’t stop. You hear me? Don’t stop.” He knew the badges on the chains around the necks would be there in large numbers any minute. He knew they had to be long gone from Heaton’s farm, was sure there weren’t even seconds to spare. He tried not to picture his father-in-law’s broken dead body in a tuft of dirty grass, but it’s all he kept seeing as he shut his eyes—that and the dogs.

  At the main drive he had Kate take a left onto the road leading to the highway. He could hear sirens in the distance, coming on like locusts.

  “Left? I thought we were going—”

  “Change of plans. Head left to London. Get on the highway.”

  She did what she was told, pulled onto the road, merged over to the highway heading south.

  “You don’t stop, Kate. No matter what. You get to London.”

  “What about my father? Tell me what’s happened.”

  “It’s fine. Keep driving.” He was fighting to stay conscious. “Go to London. I need to get to London.”

  “What are we going to do in London, baby? What’s happened? Talk to me, please, I beg you.”

  “I have to see Georgia Turnbull.”

  “Georgia Turnbull?… The chancellor? What could you possibly have to see her about? Adam? Talk to me. Please? I am so frightened. Look at the kids. We’re all petrified, darling. Talk to me. Please, I’m begging you.”

  Adam gathered enough breath to answer.

  “Go faster. Don’t stop until we get to London.”

  “Why Georgia Turnbull, Adam?”

  “I need to see her.”

  “See her for what? How do you expect to see her?”

  “Just drive.” Each word was labored; they were fewer and farther between. Each breath was harder to manufacture, harder for the children to hear, and harder for a terrified and unnerved Kate to comprehend.

  “What are you going to do when you see her, Adam? What are you going to do when you see her?” He didn’t answer for the longest time. No one said another word as the finely tuned engine of the German marvel purred perfectly along the road at eighty miles an hour. Billy’s teeth clattered as he shivered in fear, Trudy’s soul quietly ached as she finally knew what real pain of the heart felt like, and Kate could only silently whimper. Whimper and drive.

  Out of nowhere, Adam spoke. With one last burst of semi-cohesion, he made an odd, incongruous, final statement.

  “I need to see the chancellor of the exchequer.”

  PART THREE

  TURNBULL

  TATUM

  STEEL

  TURNBULL ■ 1

  Georgia had another dream about Roland. They were in the helicopter the morning of the crash. The sun was much brighter than it had actually been that day. The light was blinding, and they were laughing and drinking champagne. Roland was performing for her, doing naughty impressions of the other MPs at the conference in Brighton. There was a buoyancy to the mood as the aircraft flew mere feet above the ground, right over cars and pedestrians’ heads. They both thought it was so clever and cute for the pilot to show off like that. Roland reached out the side door and swiped off a man’s hat as they both laughed, uncontrollably.

  The helicopter landed safely at Shoreham Airport this time. The entire crash was reworked, rewritten, and replayed into just another day at the office. They disembarked, giggly and drunk, and out of nowhere Roland kissed her. She was stunned. Her face grew bright red and her heart pounded as he told her that he had always loved her. She cried as he held her close and kissed her some more. He ordered the helicopter back into the air. They hopped in and floated low over the beach at Brighton, laughing together at the world passing peacefully beneath them.

  She woke to feel a cloud of sadness hovering over her like a heavy quilt. The dream, no doubt triggered by the day’s scheduled visit to Roland, was unsettling.

  * * *

  IT WAS THE fourth time she had visited in the nine days since the bombing. It was clear for the first time that his body would, in fact, eventually heal.

  “There’s so much out there to bring you down, isn’t there, Georgia? Once you get up on top of that heap? Once you’re the one that needs toppling?” She nodded. Simple speech was still an uphill climb. His one free arm moved ahead of his mouth as if it were trying to help it along.

  “Kirsty thinks it’s an inside job. I tell her that’s science fiction. I still think it’s Islamic radicals. That lot. My brother thinks it’s the Americans. The CIA. How absurd is that?”

  “It’s a theory being floated all over the panel shows and Internet, from what I’ve been told,” Georgia explained. She wanted to tell him she was pretty sure the talk had all been launched by Heaton, but she didn’t want to upset him.

  Roland reached over, needed water. She helped pour it. He smiled in a tiny way, not sure how grateful he wanted to be for needing help to have a simple glass of water.

  “I’m done either way. I can’t do it. This is just the end. The crash was the beginning of it, but this is the end. I’ll be up on two feet soon. I feel it. They can’t keep me down. But I can’t play on the stage anymore. I need to let the parade pass.”

  She squeezed his hand, kissed his cheek again, and then the drugs walked him into the back rooms of his mind, left his broken bandaged body to lie there, not awake, not asleep. Georgia sat next to him as long as she could, then quietly left.

  * * *

  BACK AT NUMBER 10, she met with several Labour MPs who had been sent over to discuss the transition—almost as if they had placed a wire in Roland’s hospital room. The timing was uncanny but, in truth, everyone in Whitehall had been discussing nothing but the timing of when to make it official. Georgia needed to convince the party leaders that it was time for her to stand forward and lead a call to form a government. She would then see the palace and have the king ask her to do the same. None of the ministers meeting in Roland’s office thought she would have much competition. Maybe Andrew Rogan or that television whore Deandra Potter, the MP from Hendon who had seemed to Georgia to live in a television studio this last week and a half. Not the Deputy PM, Felix Holmby, thought Georgia. He had no standing in the party and was severely personality challenged.

&
nbsp; She had been the face of the government during this tragedy and had been a popular figure in the party for almost fifteen years. Polls showed her to be the most familiar player in the party next to Roland. She responded positively to the delegation that had been sent over to address the matter and agreed to make a statement in advance of a party conference the following week. As they left, she wondered what they would think if they knew that she had been behind the plot to place the bomb in the first place. Would they still think she was the “most likely, best face to put forward”?

  * * *

  ANOTHER CALL FROM Heaton had come in while she was dealing with the party reps. Early scheduled Heaton to meet her. It was time to have a face-to-face. They convened an hour later in the White Room, the very place where the bomb had gone off. Heaton brought an aide with him, a young man with a device that swept the room for surveillance equipment as they waited for Georgia, who arrived mid-sweep. She chuckled at the audacity. Heaton shrugged.

  “There are no chances worth taking at this point, are there?” Once the young man with the electronics had finished up, Heaton nodded for him to move on. Some tea was brought in. They were alone.

  “There’s been a shooting. Up at Dorrington. Two officers of DPG have been casualties. You should know about this. You will in a short time anyway, I’m sure.” Georgia lost her breath for a second. Was it Steel?

  “Two police captains, a woman named Edwina Wells and a man named Tavish. It’s all very sad. Also an old mate of mine, Gordon Thompson.” Georgia caught her wind again. She knew she wouldn’t have been able to control herself if he had said “Davina Steel.”

  “Gordon Thompson? Isn’t he the father-in-law of the American?”

  “Yes, exactly. It’s a mess. It will be cleaned up, though. It will all have actually occurred on land just to the east of my property. It’ll plummet down as ‘drugs related,’ an arrest gone bad. It’s being handled as we speak. No need to make this more of a mess than it is. It shouldn’t intertwine with the Roland thing. We’re keen to keep them unrelated.” He poured himself some tea. She marveled at how at home David was in matters of intrigue, as if this were his natural state: planning, scheming, hiding, scrambling.