by Paul Kearney
Doody peeled back one of Abby’s eyelids and shone a pen light at her pupil. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to bat his hand away. He grinned.
“She’s coming round. Might have a slight concussion.” He was feeling her head, his black fingers pressing in on Abby’s platinum blonde bob.
“No fractures I think — a bit of a bump, that’s all.”
“I’m all right,” Abby said. She sounded drunk.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” Doody asked her.
“Three — ow! My head hurts.”
“Doody, when you’re done with her, check Cutter,” Willoby said. “Sergeant Fox!”
A head-torch bobbed in the darkness above. “Yes, boss?”
“How far is there to go?”
A pause.
“I think we’ve about cracked it, boss. Can’t be any more than four or five more pitches.”
Willoby bent over Abby. He fished a thick bar of chocolate out of his pocket.
“Eat this,” he said.
“No, I couldn’t, not right now.”
“Eat it; you need the energy. And if you throw it up again, you’ll know you’ve got concussion.” As she bit into the chocolate he grinned, and touched her arm. “Good girl.”
“Good girl,” Abby parroted angrily as he turned from her to Cutter. “What does he think I am, his pet Retriever?”
“What happened?” Connor asked her. He was wiping his eyes and sniffing mightily.
“I don’t know. My foot just went out from under me. God, Connor, I’m so tired.”
“Me too,” he said. “I’m starting to think this cliff goes on forever.”
Once Doody had finished examining Cutter, they started off again. The medic had stuck some butterfly stitches on his head wound, but as they continued to climb, Cutter found it was his shoulder that was troubling him most. He began to favour that arm, and his other grew weaker as it took more of his weight.
I can’t keep this up much longer, he thought. He looked up and down the line, at times barely able to make out the figures in the blowing snow. The soldiers were climbing steadily, but the spring had gone out of their movements. In the light of the head-torches they moved now like weary old men, or miners after a long day’s toil at the coalface. Cutter felt a pang of guilt as he saw how his team’s gear weighed them down, but none of them uttered any complaint.
He clenched his teeth and climbed on.
Time passed with little talk out of any of them. There was only the stone underneath their hands and boots, the rope tugging at their waists, the dimming glow of the torches, and the incessant howling of the wind. Climbers, Cutter thought with grim satisfaction, have it worse even than fishermen. What loon would do this kind of thing for fun?
There was a cry up above, and it was Fox’s voice. Cutter couldn’t make out the words, but they were passed down the line.
“He’s at the top. We’re nearly there.”
Strangely, the words did not buck him up or flood him with new energy. If anything, they took away his last reserves of strength. When we get to the top, he thought, this thing is only starting. God knows what we’ll find up there.
“All bad things come to an end,” Fox said as Cutter reached him. The man could still grin. Cutter didn’t know what he was made of, but it was pretty stern stuff. “Up you come Professor. We’re at the top. Come along now.” Then to Abby. “Come on miss — give me your hand. Head over to the boss there. We need to get the tents up ASAP.”
Cutter found that he could stand upright, and there were tufts of grass underfoot, feeling somehow strange beneath his boots after the unrelenting stone of the climb. He unclipped his harness from the line, looked back to see Abby and Connor supporting each other over the lip of the cliff, and limped slowly over to Willoby. The SAS officer had thrown off his Bergen, webbing and rifle and was hunting through the big rucksack like a man possessed.
“We need shelter,” he said brusquely. The light of his head-torch was now a yellow, fitful beam through which the snow whipped manically before disappearing.
“We don’t know what’s up here,” Cutter said.
“It doesn’t matter. If we don’t get ourselves out of this blizzard, we’re going to start losing people. Wake up, Cutter; we’re not out of the woods yet. Doody — is that you? Lend a hand here. Get the bloody tents up. Bristow, Farnsworth, help him. Sergeant Fox, I want a head count and a kit-check.”
“Yes, sir,” Fox responded.
They fought the tent upright in the bitter wind. Four of them had to sit on the corners to stop it blowing away. Then Willoby slid the aluminium poles through the fly-sheet and the thing rose, forming a black dome. They pegged it down and set large stones on the pegs.
To one side, Stephen, Connor and Watts were fighting to do the same. Cutter gave them a hand, his shoulder now an eye-watering throb of pain which seemed to go all the way down his spine.
“Everybody inside,” Willoby said when the two tents were up. “Get as much of the gear in as you can.”
“What about stag duty, sir?” Bristow asked.
“The hell with it. Nothing is going to wander about in this storm. I want everyone sheltered, sleeping bags out, and if you can, get a brew on.” He hesitated. “Cutter.”
Cutter was standing staring out into the darkness of the howling night, in a world of his own it seemed.
“Cutter.”
“Look, Willoby,” Cutter said. And he pointed.
Willoby followed his gloved finger. Off in the darkness there was a light — no, two lights. Or were there three?
It was hard to tell.
“What in the world?” Willoby asked. “Is someone here ahead of us?”
Cutter shook his head. “Not someone, something. Those are open anomalies, Captain.”
They stood side by side as behind them the rest of the team crammed themselves into the bucking, thrashing domes of the two tents, and all around them the storm raged without pity.
“Doors to another era,” Cutter said, “lying wide open.”
Willoby snicked off the safety of his M-4, and then back on again.
“We’ll have to chance to luck tonight,” he said. “Whatever is here, whatever is out in that darkness, we’ll just have to hope it hates the cold as much as we do. The storm will cover us, sight, sound and smell. We have to wait for daylight.”
Cutter nodded.
“All right then.” He ground his chattering teeth together, and tried not to let the fear show on his face.
ELEVEN
The Aoife had begun life as a large British minesweeper. Built on the Clyde in the late sixties, she was near the end of her useful life. The Irish had refitted her, added a helipad to her fantail, and now used her for fisheries protection and enforcement, a last vestige of what might be called gunboat diplomacy.
Jenny stood on her rather Spartan bridge along with her captain, Robert Harney, and a crowd of anonymous ratings who manned the wheel, the sonar and whatever sundry other bits of equipment a small warship needed people to look after. Jenny had passed through her seasickness in the first few hours, of which she was rather proud, and now she stood looking out at the awesome power of the great Atlantic swells as they came barrelling in from America and Iceland to smash against the bow of the ship and half-bury her in foam and green water.
She was, frankly, terrified, but everyone else seemed to take the majesty of the storm as a matter of course, and so she stood holding onto a railing, pretending to be interested in what was going on, her face a wax mask of calm. Keeping the British end up and all that, she mused ruefully.
Harney was a tall, lean man with a face that looked as though it had spent years looking into the wind. He was old enough to be her father, but still possessed a roguish handsomeness. Something like a thin Sean Connery, she thought. From what she had overheard, he had been ordered out to sea at a moment’s notice, his crew’s shore leave cancelled, and yet he didn’t seem to mind. Several seamen left on shore, such wa
s their haste to cast off, and then this unknown female passenger foisted upon him, along with a small team of his country’s best soldiers.
Perhaps it made a change from chasing Spanish trawlers, or whatever it was he usually did out here in this God-awful place, she pondered silently. Perhaps he was just a philosophical man who took it all in his stride. Sailors often were — Jenny had chanced across a few in her dealings with Whitehall, and always found them to be less touchy and macho than soldiers.
Maybe the sea keeps them humble, she thought, looking out at the chaotic wilderness of water before her.
“There’ll be no getting the chopper up, not in this, Ms Lewis,” Harney said.
“We have to land, Captain. My department have heard nothing from the people on the island for well over twenty-four hours.”
“They actually climbed up those cliffs?”
“That was the plan, yes.”
“Fair play to them. But I’ll tell you now, miss, if this storm doesn’t moderate some in the next few hours, then you’ll be doing the same.”
The thought chilled Jenny. She could ride a horse, swim and shoot a clay pigeon out of the sky with a fair degree of competence, but mountaineering had never been one of her interests. She clicked her heel on the steel deck of the bridge impatiently.
Harney saw the gesture, and smiled.
“You might also think about getting changed. I’ve not yet seen a lady climb into a helicopter in stilettos. My QM will be happy to sort you out with appropriate clothing.”
Jenny nodded. She disliked uniforms intensely, a legacy of school, but Harney was simply stating the obvious.
There’s no way I’m climbing up that bloody cliff, she thought. Lunatics like Cutter may consider it an option, but I do not.
She went below to a tiny, grey-walled cupboard that sailors laughingly called a cabin, and found that a neat set of clothing and equipment had been set beside her holdall on the bed. She opened the holdall at once and went through it, but everything seemed in order. Lester had given her a satellite phone, a laptop, a GPS and an automatic pistol — a Glock 9mm. How thoughtful of him, she reflected dryly. He really does know the way to a girl’s heart.
She had been around soldiers long enough to know how to make certain the weapon was made safe, with no round up the spout. She closed the door to her cabin, set a chair against it — none of the doors had locks — and quickly set up the sat-phone. She dialled Lester’s mobile and waited, sitting on the edge of the bed and fingering the fabric of the uniform they had left out for her.
“James Lester.” The voice came through, crisp and clear.
“James, it’s Jenny.”
“One moment.”
There was a silence; from the sound of it, he had placed his hand over the phone. When he spoke again his voice was lower.
“Well?”
“We’re a few hours out from the island. Still no word from Cutter and the team. If the storm doesn’t let up, then there’s no way to make a landing.”
“But a landing must be made, all the same.” Lester’s voice was calm, controlled, but cold as the winter sea. “It may be that Cutter and his people are incapacitated, or that they got their sat-phone eaten by a Brontosaurus. I don’t care. If the Irish set foot on Guns Island, you must be there with them. Is that clear?”
There was a small silence.
“Perfectly,” Jenny said, her voice almost as cold as his had been.
“Good. I’m rather glad you called, actually. There have been a few more developments at this end.”
“Where are you?” she asked, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.
“In Brussels, brushing up on my Français. The corridors of the EU are not to be navigated lightly. I think that, if you have a moment, you might discreetly inform the Captain of your cockleshell that the French are on their way.”
“What?”
“A French frigate, La Gloire, is preparing for the journey to Guns Island even as we speak. So far, I’ve been able to dissuade them from making a landing, but they intend to make their presence felt. Here, they’re talking about setting up a maritime exclusion zone.”
“But that’s awful!” Jenny gasped. The implications were clear. “It’ll be splashed all over the newspapers.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. I think it may actually be for the best. If the French are busy strutting the high seas, they may be too preoccupied to think about what’s really going on right under their noses.” Lester cleared his throat, and lowered his voice a trifle more. “I’ve been authorised to use the bioweapons story as a smoke screen for the anomalies.”
“But it’s not true, is it? That was just a rumour.”
To her surprise, there was a moment of silence on the line.
“You could say that’s the beauty of it. In fact, it is true, completely true. That’s why Captain Willoby got the job of accompanying Cutter.”
“What do you mean?” Jenny demanded. She stuck her finger in her free ear to cut out the rumblings of the ship around her.
“There’s a bunker on the island with biological materials still stored within. It’s sealed in concrete, and the materials are probably dust after fifty years, but Willoby’s prime mission is to make sure that bunker is secure. And to keep Cutter and the others alive, of course.”
Jenny blinked, taking in this information, slotting it into her map of things.
“Who knows this, James?”
“The Irish, the French, the whole kit and caboodle. It is, as of this moment, our official line. Ironically enough, the only person who doesn’t know it by now is Cutter.”
“I’ll have to tell him.”
Lester sighed. “Of course you will.”
“The whole thing has blown up in our faces,” Jenny said with a sigh.
“It has, rather,” Lester drawled. “From here on in, we will have to be content with keeping dinosaurs off the front page. That is the mission, Jenny. Do I make myself clear?”
“Once again, James, yes.”
“If the balloon goes up on this one, then we’ll both be standing outside King’s Cross with begging bowls for the rest of our professional lives. Everything rides on your ability to keep this thing under wraps.”
“People’s lives are also on the line, James.”
“Those are the risks that come with the job,” he replied; then he paused. “Look, I have to go. I want regular reports. Use this line, and let me know the moment you set foot on the island.”
“I can’t hope to conceal the creatures from the Irish team,” Jenny said quickly. “It’s a small island, after all.”
“Do your best. And do try not to get yourself killed.”
With that last note of compassion, the line clicked off. Jenny frowned, checked the battery indicator, and then slowly began changing into the camouflaged uniform that had been set out for her. She lurched from one side of the tiny cabin to the other as the Aoife continued its battle with the Atlantic.
“There’s a window,” Captain Harney said. He straightened from his perusal of the meteorological data. “We’ve almost passed through one arm of the storm, and there’s going to be a lull of sorts — no telling how long it will last, but it should be enough to get the heli out to the island and back. It’ll take two trips to get the entire team out there.”
Jenny stood in her ill-fitting, uncomfortable new wardrobe and cast her eyes over the rest of the “team”. They were all crowded on the bridge: four soldiers, two pilots, and one older man with the longer hair and pastier features of a civilian. There had been no introductions. She was being tolerated here, but certainly not welcomed.
The older man looked her up and down. He had the same closed set to his face that she knew well from Lester, a kind of cold arrogance. Bureaucrats the world over, she thought, they’re all the same.
“Very well, Captain,” the bureaucrat said. “Make it so. My team will be ready to fly out within ten minutes.” Signalling to the soldiers, he left the bridge wit
hout another word, and they trooped after him like so many robots.
“What a lovely, warm chap,” Jenny said. The Captain laughed.
“Civil servants,” he responded, “they think the world begins and ends with them.” At Jenny’s wry look, he coughed and added, “Well, most of them, at any rate.”
Two young men in flying suits had remained on the bridge, and Jenny approached them.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said sweetly, extending a hand.
“Lieutenant Sean Brice,” said the first, who appeared to be somewhat dazzled by Jenny’s smile. “Irish Army Air Corps. I’m your pilot for today. This is Sergeant Les Mullan, my copilot.” Brice was a young, blond-haired slight fellow, and Mullan a stocky, no-nonsense NCO type with a black crew cut and shrewd eyes.
“You’re happy about going up in this weather, Lieutenant?” she asked.
“If the Captain says it’s okay to fly, then it’s okay to fly.”
“Excellent. Could I ask you both a tiny favour perhaps?” She flashed another smile.
The two pilots looked at her, noncommittal, though she was certain Brice had reddened perceptibly, and she thought he looked worried. Mullan remained stoic.
“Do you think I could be on the first flight? I have friends on the ground out there, you know, and I’ve been so worried...”
Brice grinned, relieved.
“I don’t see a problem with that,” he said. “None at all.”
The helicopter was an elderly Westland Scout. Jenny clambered into the back with a knot of cold fear tightening in her stomach. The ship was still pitching up and down under them, and the airframe of the tiny craft seemed to bend and rattle with every gust of wind. It seemed frail beyond belief, and when a burly soldier clambered in beside her, she felt a sense of claustrophobic panic.
The soldier rested the muzzle of his rifle, an Austrian Steyr, on the floor, and nodded at her.
“John McCann,” he said, in a low West-Cork brogue. He had two red zig-zags on his bicep, the mark of a corporal. He looked more like a farmer, with a big, red face and massive hands. Jenny’s throat had closed up, so she just smiled at him.