One Life Remaining (Portal Book 2)

by Mark J Maxwell

  ‘It looks like the entrance to Tilbury Power Station.’

  ‘Get the rest of the spinners over there.’

  Louisa centered the map on the power station. There were two routes leading in. A road from the west, which the truck was driving along. The other came in from the north. A winding track, unkempt and overgrown. She realised straight away they didn’t have enough spinners to monitor the site. It spanned at least two hundred acres.

  ‘The truck’s parked alongside the main building,’ Coates said. ‘There’s only one other vehicle nearby. A van belonging to a firm who has the site’s security contract. I’ve spotted two men so far, manning the security hut at the gate.’

  ‘They didn’t stop the truck?’ Louisa asked.

  Coates shook his head. ‘Nope, they raised the barrier and let it through. No fuss.’

  Louisa bit her bottom lip. If only they had sense footage. They could wind it back, identify any activity in the area, including vehicles coming and going. Instead they were blind. The power station itself comprised one main structure and at least a dozen smaller buildings in its surrounds, and she had no idea what was inside any of them.

  ‘Do you want me to bring a spinner down for a better look?’ Coates asked.

  ‘No.’ The spinners didn’t make a lot of noise, but if they were spotted the operation would be blown. ‘Keep them high and circling.’

  ‘Fletcher’s left the docks,’ DS Sloan said. ‘He’s headed in the same direction as the truck.’ She turned in her seat and looked up at Louisa.

  Why had the truck deviated from the route it had taken the previous three trips? According to its transponder the last shipment hadn’t stopped at the power station. She took another look at the map. She only had four SCD7 officers on the ground. Essex police were on standby to assist, but she wanted her own officers to make the arrests.

  Four officers might not be enough.

  The incident room fell silent. They were all staring at Louisa now. Sloan, Coates, DCI Lenihan, Drew. If she called off the operation she could reconvene in a month’s time. Then she could request extra manpower and spray out the power station with a sense grid. But right now she had the chance to catch Fletcher red-handed with the trance. What if the next time Fletcher wasn’t present at all? And what if this container was a decoy? Fletcher could have another on the “Majestueus”. One not registered with Worrell’s company. Even if he did, there were four thousand containers left on the ship. A thousand had already unloaded. They had no way of knowing which one it could be. If they arrested Fletcher with an empty container the operation would be blown.

  ‘Coates,’ Louisa said, ‘get the MIR fired up.’

  Drew’s eyebrows quirked. ‘You’re going down there yourself?’

  ‘I am. Feel free to jack in and monitor our progress.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He grinned. ‘I’m coming along too.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  A newscast anchor once suggested to Adam Walsh that the Portal CTO possessed a sixth sense. A golden touch for predicting users’ needs. Ever self-effacing, Adam laughed off the comment. ‘Everyone has an extra sense now,’ he countered, ‘it’s called Portal.’

  Louisa sometimes wondered how Londoners would react if they lost their newfound sense after eight years. Would there be panic? A breakdown in public order?

  Louisa didn’t feel panicked, but then her connection to Portal hadn’t been permanently removed, merely temporarily cut off. She could still feel something though. She likened it to thirst—as if she stood before a water cooler, gasping for a drink, and someone had removed the little blue tap. She hadn’t felt this way the last time she left Portal’s network, but back then she didn’t have the implants.

  It was a recognised condition. Information Dependency Disorder. Even if most people referred to it as Portal addiction. At least when terminals were Portal’s main interface point the dependency had been easy to diagnose amongst addicts. Now all you had to do was mouth a pre-assigned word or even concentrate on an instruction and a Portal interface would appear in the air before you. Some users only jacked out when they were asleep. They spent every waking moment connected to the network.

  Louisa suspected Coates might be a sufferer. His fidgeting first began when they crossed the M25. Now he was a foot-tapping, fingernail-biting bundle of nerves. He stretched out and closed his eyes.

  Force of habit, Louisa suspected. With your eyes shut you could immerse yourself fully in whatever extension you were running. A good two miles from a viable Portal connection however, closing your eyes brought nothing but darkness.

  Louisa, Sloan, Coates and Drew were all in the SCD7 MIR, or Mobile Incident Room, parked in a truck drivers’ rest stop half a mile from Tilbury Power Station. The converted articulated vehicle had a Portal connection, sourced from a satellite link and hard wired into the three consoles manned by Louisa, Sloan, and Coates. Before them an entire wall of the truck’s interior had been turned into a Portal screen, displaying the case file, spinner footage, and a map of the power station and its immediate surrounds.

  If Sloan was affected by Portal withdrawal, the detective wasn’t showing it. Of all of them Louisa worried about Sloan’s attention drifting the least. When Louisa accepted DCI Lenihan’s job offer to head a SCD7 team she’d had a concern about Sloan’s acceptance of her new position. The detective had clearly resented Louisa’s involvement in SCD7’s investigation of the Clothwell Syndicate murders. She needn’t have worried. The detective approached any assigned task with a singular focus. It was the main reason why she’d kept Sloan by her side during the operation. She wanted a dependable set of eyes on the case file and sense footage, especially when her team moved to arrest Fletcher and Worrell.

  The thought occurred to Louisa that Sloan might be like her, and rarely used the implants because of implant sensitivity. Louisa’s ocular implants gave her the most trouble. When activated, a warmth formed at the back of her eye sockets. With prolonged usage it seared red-hot, like a heated needle was drilling into her eyeballs. In the medical community a growing consensus was forming that the sensations were psychosomatic. Louisa had quit seeking treatment from her own GP once he asked if she was under a lot of stress at work. She knew her doctor had mentally switched from a diagnosis mode to an it’s-all-in-you-head mode.

  She counted herself lucky in a way. Some users experienced much worse symptoms. They ranged from paresthesia, where the skin would prickle or itch, to full-blown formication, where sufferers swore they had insects burrowing under their skin. Most of those poor unfortunates couldn’t stick it for long and ended up having their implants removed. Her own skin crawled at the thought. She forced herself to concentrate on the spinner footage.

  Still no movement.

  Fletcher had been inside Tilbury Power Station for nearly an hour now. Spinners swirled high above its main building, offering Louisa a bird’s-eye view. The security guards remained at their post. She focussed her attention on the storage depot and its two loading bays. The container truck was backed up tight against one of the bays, its shutters raised. The other set of shutters had opened only briefly to let Fletcher’s car inside, spilling light across the tarmac outside. The rest of the station appeared dormant.

  The station originally comprised two main power plants: A and B, but A had been demolished, leaving B as the sole operational plant for another fifteen years before its decommission. The plants were originally set up to burn coal, syphoning the fuel off river barges up a long conveyer belt to the stations, although plant B later converted to biomass. Now the entire site was derelict, its stockpiles of fuel removed and the surrounding marshes and grass meadows given over to the care of a local wildlife trust.

  ‘Waiting is a mistake,’ Drew said, over her shoulder. ‘You should move. Now, before Fletcher leaves.’

  He’d been pacing constantly behind their consoles from the moment they’d parked. It was highly irritating, and abnormal behaviour for someone normally so composed.

>   Is he suffering Portal withdrawal too, or is there another reason?

  ‘We wait another five minutes,’ Louisa said. ‘If Fletcher leaves we can pick him up.’

  ‘You think he’ll be dumb enough to carry the trance on him? He’ll have a lackey drive it back to London.’

  Louisa bit back an angry response. His doubts echoed her own too closely for comfort. If she wanted to charge Fletcher with distributing trance she needed to catch him with the shipment. But she didn’t just want Fletcher. She wanted Worrell too. The trance has to be inside. Fletcher wouldn’t go to this much trouble for a decoy, would he?

  ‘Coates,’ Louisa said, ‘have the roaches finished?’

  ‘Nearly.’ Coates didn’t look up from the console. ‘Their mote reservoirs are almost depleted.’

  Spinners had dropped fifty roaches onto the plant. The tiny mechanical bugs were certainly roach-like in their ability to scurry across walls and ceilings. Once activated, they infiltrated a building spraying inert sense motes as they went. When the motes were activated a sense grid would form, mapping out the interior of the building. Given the size of the power station it was unlikely they’d have enough motes to expose every nook and cranny. They’d only find out how successful the mapping had been once they activated the grid.

  Bolton’s circle flashed red as he spoke. ‘Ma’am, Worrell is on the move.’

  Finally! Louisa stood and moved to stand behind Coates. ‘Are we tracking him?’

  ‘We have a spinner over his Land Rover,’ Coates said. ‘He’s heading for the power station. ETA fifteen minutes.’

  *

  Four blue circles pulsed along a thin black line. Louisa chewed a fingernail as she studied the officers’ locators. Bolton and Hargreaves had joined Allen and Jenkins at the mouth of the track leading into the power station. They’d left their cars hidden behind a copse of trees. The four detectives had kept well back from the station until Worrell arrived and joined Fletcher, driving into the depot via the same loading bay.

  Coates had dug up the power station’s construction plans, which were now displayed on the wall screen. The depot wasn’t on them, having been constructed when the plant converted to burning wood chips. It resembled a large shed, two storeys tall. The rest of the station was largely open plan with huge spaces designed to house the plant’s machinery.

  Doubt clawed at her. The power station was too big. Too spread out. A hodgepodge of ramshackle buildings in various stages of decay. It was a risk sending her officers in on foot. If it all went pear-shaped...

  She gave herself a mental shake. Too late for what-ifs. Besides, she knew Bolton was up to the job. She’d hired the detective herself—or poached him, more accurately. DS Bolton used to lead a Murder Investigation Team in SCD1 and their paths had crossed on more than one occasion. When an opening appeared in SCD7 she’d immediately thought of him.

  ‘Boss,’ Coates said, ‘I’m not sure how much longer the spinners can maintain their altitude. The wind has really picked up.’

  Louisa bit her top lip. She couldn’t afford to lose the surveillance devices. They were the only eyes she had.

  Drew had ceased pacing, and now hovered directly behind her.

  ‘Anchor them to the cooling towers.’ The vantage point from atop the red and white striped spires wouldn’t provide coverage of the entire site, but it was the best she could come up with.

  ‘We’re at the security fence,’ Bolton said. They had reached the end of the track. ‘There’s a locked gate here. We’re taking care of it.’ Louisa heard the metallic snip of a chain being cut, then rattling as it unwound from the gate.

  The power station had its own network of bitumen-surfaced roads and the four detectives paused briefly at the edge of one before darting across to the trees and undergrowth on the other side. The squad continued south until the trees thinned out. Up until now they’d used the trees for cover because the roads were well lit. In fact, the spinners had showed most of the site to be illuminated, except for a large area of wasteland next to the station’s main building complex. A mountain of solid fuel had once lain there when the station still functioned.

  Bolton spoke again. ‘Are we clear to approach?’

  Louisa glanced at Coates who was keeping an eye on the security guards. He nodded. ‘You’re clear,’ she said.

  A spinner camera, now perched atop one of the towers, caught sight of the officers as they broke from the tree line and disappeared into the unlit expanse. Louisa kept a wary eye on spinner footage showing the loading bays. There was no indication the men had been seen.

  A few tense minutes later they reappeared and took cover amongst a trio of squat storage silos each three times the height of her men. The silos were equidistant between the loading bay and the security gate, and offered a clear line of sight to both.

  ‘Another vehicle is approaching the security gate.’ Coates’ voice was raised in alarm.

  ‘Bolton, sit tight,’ Louisa said.

  Coates zoomed in a spinner camera. A white Ford Transit had driven up to the security barrier. There were at least two people inside but the spinner didn’t have a good enough angle to read their faces. ‘Tell me we at least got the plate.’

  ‘The van’s lights blinded the camera. I can’t guarantee we’ll capture the plate inside the site, either. The spinners are too high.’

  ‘Can you land one on a silo beside Bolton?’

  ‘I can try.’ Coates didn’t sound entirely convinced. ‘But there’s a chance it’ll bounce off the roof and end up in the dirt.’

  Louisa could hear the wind whistling on the footage. Losing a spinner wouldn’t be a problem in itself. They had plenty in reserve. Her main worry was that the van’s occupants might catch a glimpse of one as it descended.

  ‘Bring one down when the van clears the silos,’ she said.

  The barrier rose and the van continued into the site without incident. The guards were clearly on the take. Whether they were part of Worrell’s crew, or had merely been thrown a few quid to turn a blind eye remained as yet unclear.

  The van’s lights flashed across the silos. A spinner detached from its perch and immediately fought to hold its position. The noise of its fluttering wings rose alarmingly. It lurched, then plummeted without warning. After a few seconds it managed to recover and continued on a steadier downward spiral.

  The landing was less than pretty. Louisa winced as the spinner hit the flat roof of the silo with a dull clang and bounced twice. There was a screech as its claws bit into the metal, arresting its slide at the silo’s edge. Coates swung the spinner’s camera toward the loading bay. It caught the rear of the van just as the shutter rolled down.

  ‘It’s registered to UR-Vans,’ Coates said. ‘A rental franchise. This vehicle was picked up from a branch near Chelmsford.’

  ‘Sense logs?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘Sorry, no luck. Chelmsford doesn’t have Portal. The customer paid in cash. A Mr John Smith. He even left a sizeable cash deposit.’

  John Smith? Louisa smiled at the lack of imagination and put the van’s occupants from her mind. She was acutely aware of how little time they had remaining. The van was likely there to transport the trance. The container would then continue on its normal route to Worrell’s warehouse with an entirely legal cargo. Perhaps the switch had been introduced for this run. Worrell must have been nervous about keeping the drugs at his warehouse, even if only for a few hours.

  ‘Bolton. Jenkins,’ Louisa said. ‘You’re up.’

  The two detectives sprinted from the silos and ducked behind a wall that had once formed part of Station A. From there they scooted from cover to cover, working their way around to the rear of the security hut.

  The wooden hut was barely ten feet square, and its windows offered the two guards inside a full 360-degree view. Inside, one of the guards looked to be using a tablet. The other kept his eyes on the main road.

  Bolton unholstered his Glock pistol as he neared the hut. All the officer
s were similarly armed and clad in bulletproof vests. He waved Jenkins around the side of the hut. When Bolton reached the door he gave Jenkins a nod. The DC rapped the window with his knuckles. The security guards jumped at the noise, the man with the tablet nearly falling off his seat.

  Bolton shoved the door open. ‘Armed police.’ His voice was low, but firm. ‘Down on the floor.’

  There was a brief hesitation Louisa put down to shock rather than wilful disobedience, then the guards complied. They disappeared from view.

  As Bolton covered the guards, Jenkins entered the hut in a crouch. Cuffs clicked into place. One of the security guards finally found his voice. ‘What’s this about? We haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Shut it.’ Bolton nodded to Jenkins. ‘Stay with them.’ He set off back to the silos.

  Jenkins took a seat. Louisa smiled in appreciation when, in a moment of inspiration, he retrieved one of the guards’ caps from the floor and donned it.

  ‘Coates,’ Louisa said, once Bolton had rejoined the other officers, ‘is the sense grid ready?’

  ‘Yes, boss. Just say the word.’

  ‘Bolton, get into position and ready the key.’

  Bolton’s radio chirped in acceptance. The silo camera followed the remaining three officers making for the depot.

  A low brick wall ringed the bay. Bolton ducked behind it and waited for the others to catch up before peering over. Apart from the shutters, the most direct route inside was via a door adjacent to the container truck. The depot likely allowed passage through to the main building, but Louisa didn’t want to risk sending her team in by another route. She had no idea how much of its internal structure still mirrored Coates’ plans.

  Bolton hopped over the wall and sprinted to the truck’s cab. He leaned around the corner for a look before waving the officers forward. They darted across to stand on either side of the door. Bolton knelt before it. Less than a minute later he moved beside Allen. His radio chirped twice in quick succession.

  Louisa took a breath to steady her nerves. ‘Sloan, get the subnet booster online.’