At the US Airbase, the van was met by a smart and efficient young American man in a black suit and sunglasses, who showed them to a private lounge, where lunch was served.
Les was full of questions by now, but was stifled by the man, who asked them all to be patient for a few more minutes, when all would be explained.
Thirty minutes later, a woman in a smart black business suit entered the lounge and addressed the family in short, sharp sentences. It was as if the whole business was a chore and she wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible:
‘Mr and Mrs Townsend, Matt, Lynne and Marie. Good Afternoon. My name is unimportant. I am here to deliver your passports and instructions for your onward journey. You will not be flying to Florida, but instead to another final destination which will be revealed to you in due course. You will be taking off from Frankfurt within the hour and landing in Washington DC, where you will be accommodated until further notice – probably in a hotel. Our friend – Ms Fletcher – will be unaware of the ...er.. ‘change of plan’, which is probably a very good idea – as you can doubtless imagine. I am not prepared to disclose any further information and will not be taking questions. Your passports and five thousand US dollars in cash are in this envelope. Bon voyage and good luck.’
At which, she wheeled around and left the room, slamming the door behind her.
This was becoming all too much for Marie, who began sobbing violently and had to be consoled by Sue and Lynne, who themselves were close to tears.
Ten minutes later a young woman in USAF uniform entered the room and led them to the departure lounge, from where they boarded the aircraft and took off for Washington DC twenty minutes later.
For the time being, they were beyond the grasp of Ann Fletcher, whose activities were being closely monitored by US government agencies – as they had been for many years. They had allowed Fletcher enough rope because it suited their purposes, but were not prepared to sanction the murder of five innocents. The driver she had coerced into murdering the Townsends had been intercepted at the last minute by close surveillance agents and another substituted.
They were aware of Ann Fletcher’s plans for the future – or rather they had a pretty good idea. They couldn’t directly interfere in the specific day-to-day processes of the new British government, but they could monitor Ann Fletcher and keep her under some sort of control.
She was an extremely powerful and influential politician with an enormous web of contacts, informants and allies. Added to this were the numerous victims of her blackmail and manipulation, whom she had been exploiting for many years.
They desperately wanted to put Fletcher out of action, but they sought to stifle her contacts in the US Secret Service even more. They had an inkling of her immediate plans for the UK economy and were prepared to sit and await developments.
Back in Brussels, Her Excellency Dame Ann Fletcher had had no intention of letting any of the Townsends – or anyone else come to that - interfere with her plans for Chloe, or to blab to anyone about the unauthorised rescue mission, before her main strategy was complete.
She had much, much bigger fish to fry.
Day 25
Wednesday 8th January
Tesco Superstore – Brighton
At 6am on Wednesday the eighth of January, Patric and Joanie Silver were ready to leave the protection of the shop which had both protected them and held them prisoner for over two weeks.
Patric could have remained inside the relatively safe walls of Tesco, but he wasn’t so sure that it was safe. They’d had to expel five thoroughly bad sorts and he truly believed that they would return to seek vengeance sometime very soon – if not today. He didn’t want to involve his wife in a pitched battle with maniacs, so he reasoned that they would stand a better chance on their own. Joanie wasn’t convinced, but eventually settled on Patric’s plan. She desperately wanted to visit her parents’ house in Worthing even though she fully appreciated that it was most probably a tomb. However, she wanted some sort of closure, so that she could deal with whatever came next when they finally escaped from the snow!
Patric had already compromised and accepted that travelling up to Southport in Lancashire in the prevailing conditions was all but impossible. He argued that if they could reach Europe and join the search force, he might get himself allocated to the North-West. It was a chance anyway, and the best hope he had of finding out what happened to his parents, three siblings and their families. In reality, he didn’t have much hope to hang on to at all, and tried to drive it all out of his mind.
So, here they stood, at the end window of the office complex. It was still dark outside, but they would be able to navigate until daylight by the eerie, ghostly white glow from the snow!
Their haversacks were packed with essentials from the store. Their fellow ‘inmates’ had been extremely generous and let them purloin anything they desired. One of the women, who had been a mechanic, had rigged up a Garmin charger from a semi-buried Audi in the car park. The Garmin Sat Nav was now fully charged and programmed with the postcode for Joanie’s parents’ house. They had dressed for the weather and were going to use the two pairs of skis which had been donated for their use.
Therefore, as they stood by the window, they had already said their farewells and were both quite tearful. It was an emotional parting as the couple swung their legs over the sill, clipped on their skis, picked up their ski poles and set off quietly around to the back of the building. They were acutely aware that somebody might be observing the store and so they moved soundlessly to the rear.
Fortuitously, they heard nor met anyone and paused to take a bearing from the muted Garmin. The last thing they wanted was a piercing female voice shouting: ‘re-calculating, re-calculating,’ alerting all and sundry to their presence.
Patric picked an object about half a mile distant and pointed it out to Joanie. He then sent her off in front and trailed by about ten metres. They repeated this drill every half an hour or so, until dawn, when they took shelter in the lee of a church spire. They had made good progress – skiing almost four miles. At this rate they should reach the bungalow well before dark. They shared some hot chicken soup from a thermos flask and set off again after a fifteen minute rest.
At around midday, they saw their first helicopter, sweeping in from the coast. Although they didn’t hail it, it flew towards their position and hovered about twenty metres distant. The co-pilot threw out some leaflets and mimed a rescue scenario. Patric mimed a ‘thanks – but no thanks’ reply, at which the crew shrugged and flew away. This almost comical episode reoccurred twice more before they reached the co-ordinates for Joanie’s parent’s bungalow, at 2.15pm. They had made good time and Patric calculated that they probably had about two hours of light remaining.
Joanie was tired but adrenaline now kicked in. They knew the exact location of the house, because of a huge electricity pylon in the field to the rear of the garden. Patric had brought two folding trenching tools, and after calculating the approximate position of the chimney on the completely buried bungalow, he started to dig. They were aiming for the window to the loft, which provided light for Joanie’s fathers’ extensive train set. He knew that the house was about ten feet high, plus another four or five feet to the roof light. There must have been about a foot of melt which had seeped away, so Patric had about ten or twelve feet to dig through.
He stood on his skis with legs akimbo and began to dig into the snow, asking Joanie to relocate it further away from the building. He didn’t want a pile of snow collapsing on top of him as he tunnelled deeper. They worked quickly and after an hour, Patric hit something hard.
‘Spot on,’ he cried out, as he scraped more snow to one side. ‘It's the ridge. Brilliant. Now I’ll dig to the chimney, work back and find the window. Shouldn’t take too long. Do you need a rest?’ he asked breathlessly.
‘No way,’ replied an enthusiastic Joanie.
Patric carried on for another fifteen minutes and he found the window
with a loud clink of metal on glass.
‘I'm there,’ he shouted tiredly. He was just about done in, but he knew that if he didn’t get into the house from here, they had nowhere else to spend the night. The roof looked as if it was still in one piece. The steep sided Scandinavian slope had done its job. There was no easy way in, so Patric would have to smash the glass. The trenching tool had a sharp six-inch protrusion which Patric applied to the centre of the glass. He was a bit too cautious the first time, but at the second attempt, he broke through. The glass shattered and fell through into the attic, crashing onto the splendid train set below. Patric used the shovel end of his tool to completely clear the loose glass from the frame.
He shouted up to Joanie.
‘Get the two packs and I’ll chuck them in.’
After dropping them down, he released the skis and poles and threw them in. Next he got Joanie to slide down to his position. He grabbed her arms and lowered his wife onto the train set table. Once she had sat down, swivelled her legs and jumped off the table, Patric followed her down.
They were in!
Some of the snow was fluttering down into the loft, so Patric picked up the packs and ski gear and carried it all towards the ceiling hatch.
‘Joanie,’ he ordered, ‘wait here. Let me go first!’
Joanie started to protest but thought better of it.
Patric quickly searched each of the bedrooms, until he found Joanie’s mum and dad in the third.
*******
They were clearly both dead, but looked asleep, and the cold had preserved them in a remarkably lifelike state, and thankfully there was no smell. Joanie was shouting and asking if he’d found anything; but Patric told her to hang on just a bit longer.
He tidied up the room, removing some food packaging and other detritus, quickly stuffing it under the double bed. When he was happy, he went back out onto the landing to fetch Joanie.
‘I’ve found something. Prepare yourself – you knew that this is what we’d probably find.’
Joanie looked distressed as Patric took her hand and led her loft ladder and into the bedroom, where Joanie just stopped in her tracks, put both hands to her mouth and said nothing. She just stood there with Patrics’ arm round her shoulder. After about a minute, she moved to the bed and sat down on the edge:
‘They look so peaceful,’ she said softly.
Patric moved out of the room and gave his wife some time with her parents whilst he investigated the remainder of the bungalow. There was some snow melt running down the back wall, but as yet there was little damage and no flooding of significance, although the conservatory had collapsed inwards. He checked for food and water and found precious little. What he did find was a full cylinder of LPG propane. Joanie’s parents must have been too weak to haul it to their bedroom for their gas heater. This meant that he and Joanie would have some welcome and vital heat for the coming night.
He went back to the bedroom after about twenty minutes, by which time Joanie had finished tidying the furniture and was just pulling the sheet over her parent’s faces. She turned to Patric.
‘Thanks for making the effort to come here. It now means that I can carry on without the constant worry over what happened to them. They went peacefully and together, which is probably more than most of us will ever get. I'm going to seal this room now leave them to rest in peace.’
Patric gave her another hug and led her out into the hallway.
‘I’ll just get the gas heater and then I’ll shut the door. They should be safe here until we can get back to give them a proper burial.’
Joanie nodded and wiped away a tear. Patric shut the door and moved the heater into the smallest bedroom. Joanie climbed the short ladder into the loft and spent the next half-hour clearing the broken glass from her father’s train set. It was a sort of grief control. Patric decided to stay with her, so he grabbed a blanket from the airing cupboard, a toolbox from the utility room and covered the gap where they had broken through the window. When they had restored the room to its former glory, they went into the kitchen to find something to eat.
‘Do you really think they went peacefully, Patric?’ Joanie persisted.
‘Yes - probably in their sleep. They didn’t suffer, Joanie, I'm sure.’
‘Okay, we’ll draw a temporary line under it all. Let's concentrate now on getting to safety,’ conceded Joanie.
Patric smiled and gave her another long hug.
They liberated documents and passports and some cash they found in a desk drawer. Patric sealed it all in a strong plastic wallet whilst Joanie gathered her mother’s jewellery, which Patric wrapped in a cushion cover and stuffed it in his rucksack. The rest of the evening was spent eating and reminiscing. They made the small bedroom their base and kept the gas heater on full power all night – they wouldn’t need the propane after their brief visit! They enjoyed a snug double bed for the first time since they were brutally evicted from their motorhome in the Brighton campsite.
It was bliss.
Next morning, around 11am, after Joanie had said a quick final farewell to her parents, they climbed out of the loft using an extendable ladder from the Aladdin’s cave known as the utility room. First, they used it to climb onto the roof from the attic, after which they pulled it up and used it to scramble over the snowy slope to the surface. Patric tried to cover the broken window with a piece of hardboard he found in the loft, but he realised that snow melt would soon crumble it, and water would eventually gush in.
By noon on Thursday the ninth of January, they were safely on the surface once more.
It had been hard work, but the sun shone warmly and their spirits soared. Patrics’ plan was simply to head back to the area where the helicopters had approached them yesterday and thumb a lift.
They set off for the general area and after about an hour they spied a large fixed wing aircraft flying at a couple of thousand feet. The crew were dispensing something out of the rear, and when several fluttered down onto their heads, they realised that it was just more leaflets.
‘Well, we might start a fire with these to keep warm, but we really need a chopper and I'm surprised we haven’t seen one yet,’ quipped Patric.
‘Let's hope we spot one soon. I don’t fancy another night out in this snow,’ said Joanie worriedly.
‘At this rate, we might not have any choice!’
As he spoke these words, he scanned the horizon and picked up a group of about twenty people slowly moving towards their position.
Day 26
Thursday 9th January
Ley Street Car Park – Ilford, Essex
Brady stood at the front of his car, hands on head, desperately trying to send ESP signals to Chloe and Chris, not to mention Ross – trying to get them to look in his direction.
Their three assailants were armed with baseball bats – but the discovery of Brady’s automatic rifle was causing excitement. Brady still had his handgun, but it was hidden, out of reach under his outer jacket.
‘Hey, look at this, boys. We got ourselves some proper hardware.’
Brady decided to try and distract the three men.
‘Be careful with that. It's bloody dangerous if you don’t know how to handle it!’
‘Shut it, you!’ blasted the apparent leader who was dressed in a scruffy heavy overcoat and an orange bobble hat. He examined the rifle and pointed it in the general direction of Chloe and Chris. Fortunately, the safety catch was applied. Brady reckoned that bobble hat wouldn't know how to release it, so they were relatively safe – for now.
‘Have you got any food?’ barked a second voice.
‘Yeah, where’s your grub. You must have some and were starving,’ shouted a desperate third.
Bobble hat tried to take back control.
‘Right, you three, over there. Spud, check the cars for food. Harry, cover them while I work out how this gun works.
Whilst his minions did as they were instructed, bobble hat moved away examining the weapon clos
ely. He found the safety, released it and immediately a round fired – luckily it was set on single-shot. The bullet ricocheted around the car park as bobble hat ducked as he recovered from the surprise.
He turned back towards his mates, who were both staring intensely at something behind their leader.
‘Drop it – now!’ snarled a calm yet forceful voice.
Ross was standing behind bobble hat and had a hand gun pressed tightly against his orange atrocity. The SAS man had heard the initial ruckus from the parcel shelf of his 4x4 where he was concealed. He'd hidden himself there, pulling the plastic security flap over his cramped body. It was uncomfortable, but Ross had spent worse nights.
He had slipped out of the rear of the 4x4 and circled round to the far side of the car park. He had spotted bobble hat playing with the rifle and when the single shot flew past his ear, he decided that it was time to take action.
‘I said, drop it. Place it gently on the ground.’
Spud and Harry had stopped ransacking the cars, and were now legging it as fast as they could away from the scene.
‘Let them go,’ shouted Ross, ‘they're harmless – just hungry probably.’
Brady watched the two men escape down the pedestrian staircase and then sprinted up to Ross and retained his rifle.
‘Need to stay alert, Andy,’ scolded Ross.
‘Mea culpa,’ replied Brady. Ross had got them out of trouble yet again.
Ross bundled bobble hat along the passageway.
‘Hungry mate?’ he asked kindly.
‘You bet. I'm famished. Haven’t eaten in three days.’
Ross called over to Chloe and Chris.
‘Dig out some grub for this bloke will, you. A tin of beans or whatever.’
Two minutes later bobble hat was cramming cold beans down his neck like it was going out of fashion.
‘We’ll hold him here till we leave in the morning,’ said Ross, ‘it’ll probably keep the others away. I’ll take the lookout till dawn and we’ll get away as early as possible. Spud and Harry are probably telling other people of our bounty as we speak.’
Snow! The Series [Books 1-4] Page 71